Well I can't say this is the last time I will be making the drive from NY to TN but it is the last time I will have a vehicle so loaded up that you would change lanes to get away from me on the highway.
In case you are wondering everything made it just fine :-) I had worked and then finished loading the car before my Mom and I hit the road. Since both of us had worked we planned to drive until about midnight before pulling off at a hotel and spending the night. We were both slightly concerned about someone trying to steal from our car but it would have taken a lot of effort to untangle the mess of bungee cords. Also the hotel kindly allowed us to park in their covered entrance since that is where the security cameras were located. We slept and were back on the road by 7am.
I want to say it was around 3pm when we passed Nashville and it's unique skyline complete with the building we affectionately refer to as Batman.
Which means that around 3:30 pm we passed this sign and we were at my new home.
There is a lot to do when you move, especially when you move to another state. I had to get my license and re-register my car. I had hoped to get both of these things done in the first couple of days that I was in TN but it wasn't meant to be. I had been able to open a new bank account but my transfer had gone through so quickly that my utility bills hadn't started coming to my new address yet. So I didn't have enough to prove address change in order to get my license. Also I couldn't register Tramp, my car - named after a Bruce Springsteen song, because I couldn't find my NY title which is probably in a very safe location in a box labelled papers . . . . or kitchen supplies . . . . we may have labelled it kitchen supplies in case the ABF truck got broken into because who cares about kitchen supplies but a box labelled paperwork has identity theft written all over it . . . literally. Anyway I needed the copy of my NY title to arrive so that I could reregister the car. It came eventually as did some utility bulls and I now have my TN license and my truck is now officially a TN resident.
Complete with Smokey Mountain license plate
I want to say that for the first two weeks it did not feel real. I still felt like I was visiting and would be driving back to NY soon. Now that feeling has passed and I am looking forward to future backyard projects and a lifetime of memories in TN.
Well 2014 is over and good riddance! I can't say I'm going to be sad to see the end of this year. It has been frustrating and heart breaking.
At the start of the year I thought for certain I would be in TN by the spring/summer. Then the pipes in my house froze and broke in multiple places. That happened very early in the year and served as a good indicator on how the year went.
Of course there are good times too. The trip we took to Italy was filled with wonderful memories and once in a lifetime type moments. I am still putting together pictures and videos from that trip to post here.
Actually over the last few months I have started several posts and just never finished them. I think part of the problem is that I really thought by now this blog would have become more about decorating my house and fun projects I had planned. Now I have just been collecting things I want to do in my house and waiting and waiting and waiting to get there.
I'll get there soon enough I know. The house in NY is empty and ready to hit the market. We have consulted with a couple of realtors and are doing research as to price and how the market is trending.
So hopefully next year as I look back at 2015 it will be from TN and I will be looking back at my first projects and memories in my house.
So as I watch the Rangers playing in the Stanley Cup Final my mind keeps drifting back to perhaps my best hockey moment before this. It was back in 2007 when the Rangers were playing the Buffalo Sabres. I had left NYU and gone to the bar/restaurant in Penn Station to watch the game before I jumped on a train. As I sat down a woman across the bar called out to me something along the lines of: "Look at this girl she is a true fan she has a Ranger jacket and hat and jersey." I waved and we maybe had a short exchange. At the end of the game I was getting ready to leave and something else caught her attention and she repeated the list. So I went over to her and we talked. I told her I was a crazy fan and showed her pictures of our car which Meg and I had painted for the Rangers playoffs. She asked me if I went to a lot of games and I said no just a few. She asked why and I told her it was to expensive. Then she said to me "well I'm about to make your day." She worked for the Rangers and she told me to call her the next day and she would get me tickets. Well I was in shock and I thanked her and told her she didn't know how much this meant to me. It was more than just going to see a playoff game. I had tickets to the final game of the season and planned on going with Meghan. However she had just had her last surgery after her car accident a few days before the season ended and couldn't make it to the game. Now a few weeks later she could. The next day when I called she told me the tickets would be in the nose bleeds and I said I didn't care. She asked me when I could get in on Sunday and I told her whenever she needed me there I could be there. On Sunday we took the LIRR in to the city and I left Meg by the playoff bus that circled Times Square while I went to get the tickets. As I walked over she smiled and told me she had another surprise for me. The tickets weren't nose bleeds. They were in a suite. I was in tears. I went running back to Meg (almost fell down the steps of MSG). We rode the playoff bus around the city and then went in to the Garden. Just when we thought it couldn't get better the elevator door opened at the suite level and there in front of us was Ron Duguay signing autographs. As exciting as our pre-game experience was the game followed more than held its own. As Michael Roszival ended up getting the winning goal in a double over time. The Rangers didn't end up advancing but that didn't matter. Just to go to a playoff game and see a win with my sister (especially after missing the last game) was all I needed. Now the Rangers are in the third period against the Kings in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 20 years. All last round I felt like I was satisfied. I never thought the Rangers would get past the first round let alone make it to the third. They fought Philly and Pittsburg and came out strong against Montreal and I really felt like if they lost I would be ok because they could hold their heads high with how they played. But now they are here. They are in the final and there is no reason they can't beat the Kings (or any team) in a series. They need to stay focused, keep their sticks on the ice, support each other especially in the neutral zone, they need to use their speed to draw penalties rather than take dumb penalties and they need to clear the puck away from Hank. All last round I felt like I was satisfied. I never thought the Rangers would get past the first round let alone make it to the third. They fought Philly and Pittsburg and came out strong against Montreal and I really felt like if they lost I would be ok because they could hold their heads high with how they played. But now they are here. They are in the final and there is no reason they can't beat the Kings (or any team) in a series. They need to stay focused, keep their sticks on the ice, support each other especially in the neutral zone, they need to use their speed to draw penalties rather than take dumb penalties and they need to clear the puck away from Hank.
A few weeks ago Meghan told me that a magnetic storm was going to cause the Northern Lights to reach potentially a 5 on the Kp-scale. I started looking up areas on a map where I might have a better chance of seeing the lights (where I am in NY would need a score of around 7 and a whole lot less light pollution) to be visible. I figured if it was a three or four hour drive then after work I could go for a nice drive with my Mom and park somewhere facing north. I pulled up a dark sky map to see where there would be the least light pollution.
Kp numbers over North America
Dark Sky Map
It was pretty clear that there was nowhere I could drive to quickly that would greatly increase my odds of seeing the Northern Lights. Which meant that there would need to be a reason to go other than seeing the Northern Lights since it was possible that even with the magnetic storm we still wouldn't see anything. Now there was a very dark spot in Maine. So I google mapped it to see how long the drive would be and if anything was near there that would be worth while. Well there is nothing near there and apparently you can't drive there! According to google maps the suggested driving route was to take a plane. Yeah. I had never seen that before. Mind you I took a trip from NY-TN-TX-GA-TN-NY. And never once did google driving directions tell me to fly. :-)
The next dark spot was Lake Ontario. Now I have lived in NY my entire life but I have never been to one of NY's greatest tourist spots, Niagara Falls. I have also never seen any of the great lakes. So imagine when I checked my handy dandy google map and discovered that Niagara Falls was only seven hours away. So that Friday night around 8pm after doing all the research I needed I asked my Mom how would she feel about getting up at 4am and driving to Niagara Falls, checking out the sights, seeing Lake Erie, and then driving over to Lake Ontario to hopefully see the Northern Lights. And being the awesome adventurous person she is my Mom said sure.
While driving on I-90 we pulled over at the Syracuse road stop for a break and a drink. In the stop was Zoltar the Gypsy fortune teller. So I had my fortune read and according to Zoltar I should do the things I feel I should, because no one wants to leave this place with regrets. Which was kind of fitting since we were on a spur of the moment seven hour trip. To make our spur of the moment trip even better we reached Buffalo NY right around 1:30 which was conveniently right around the time we wanted to stop for lunch. Now when driving by Buffalo NY and needing to stop for lunch what better place could we choose then the birth place of the Buffalo wing? (See even our spur of the moment trips have spur of the moment trips).
We remembered seeing a clip about the Anchor Bar on the Sunday morning show on CBS. The story went that when the owner's, Teressa Bellissimo, son came home one night with a bunch of friend's she wanted to find something for them to eat. She deep fried some chicken wings (usually used for soup) and poured a sauce over them and served them with blue cheese. And like that the Buffalo Wing was born! So I typed Anchor Bar into the GPS and we drove over. We of course ordered the wings and they did not disappoint! That's an understatement cause they were awesome!
I mean how yummy does that look? I'm not
usually a fan of wings but this was special!
At a different rest stop we picked up a map of the Niagara Falls area. I thought that we might be able to park on Goat Island and watch the Northern Lights from there. Now this was off-season for tourists and because of that we made a wonderful discovery. Everything was free: the parking was free, the trolley was free, and the observation deck was free.
From our parking spot we walked over to the Horseshoe Falls. Here is a view off the falls. The water was so beautiful and blue as it rushed towards the Falls. The mist swirled up and around the falls creating an ethereal effect.
Sadly because it was off season the Maid of the Mist boats were beached. Also the cave that you can walk through was closed partly because it was off season and also because of a beautification project that Governor Andrew Cuomo has commissioned. I can't wait to see how the facelift will look when it is finished. From the Horseshoe Falls we took the trolley over to where the main visitor center, aquarium, and observation deck were located. We walked out onto the observation deck for an amazing view of the Falls. One thing I never realized was that Niagara Falls is made of three different falls: the Horseshoe falls, the American Falls, and the Bridal Falls. Being so close to a brutally cold winter the Falls still had a good amount of snow and ice built up. Which, in my opinion, provided a view of the Falls just as beautiful as normally seen and quite remarkable. I mean I will be very excited to see the Falls again sometime when they aren't still icy. As it was the water wasn't flowing as fast as normal and it was still amazing.
I really like the way the ice seems to be reaching towards the falls like a white shield surrounding them.
We left the observation deck and walked over the boundary line to Canada and then came back to America. When we got to the customs desk the agent asked where we were coming from which confused me (being that there was only one option) and then made me laugh as I answered Canada. As we were walking back we passed the stone where it is said that Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan priest, viewed the Falls. He eloquently described them by saying:
"Betwixt the Lake Ontario and Erie, there is a vast prodigious Cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the Universe does not afford its parallel. 'Tis true, Italy and Suedeland boast of some such things; but we may well say they are but sorry patterns, when compared to this of which we now speak. At the foot of the horrible precipice we meet with the river Niagara, which is not above half a quarter of a league broad, but is wonderfully deep in some places. It is rapid above this descent, that it violently hurries down the wild beasts while endeavoring to pass it, to feed on the other side; they not being able to withstand the force of its current, which inevitably casts them down headlong above six hundred foot."
The magnetic storm was supposed to start around 7:30 causing the spike of the Northern Lights. So we headed north to Lake Ontario. When we had stopped at one of the rest stops on the way to Niagara my Mom had picked up many brochures (for planning future road trips). One of them mentioned the Woodcock brother's brewery in Wilson NY just south of Lake Ontario. So our initial plan was to find a spot and sit at Lake Ontario for a few hours and then go for a late dinner around 9pm. But making plans is a really fluid thing because I find they are constantly changing.
We drove past the brewery and continued up to the road to Lake Ontario (to a beautiful spot I will have to keep in mind next time I go). My first thought as I walked up to it was that it was more like an ocean then a lake. It had waves and a beach. When I thought back to the still waters of Lake Placid and Mirror Lake it was so unbelievably different.
As you can see in the panorama the sun was still up and very bright. Unfortunately this was at 7:30 right when the Northern Lights spiked. In a perfect world it would have been darker and in this shot I would have had an extraordinary display of lights through out the sky. But the world isn't perfect and we had taken that imperfection well into account so it wasn't very disappointing anyway. We drove a few blocks back to the brewery for a delicious dinner. The menu asks for patience because good food takes time to cook. The menu was right. The food was great and made the wait worth it. The spent grain pretzels were an amazing kick off to the meal, and the serving was huge so we had some to take with us for the drive home. When we left we went back to Lake Ontario, now that it was dark, but the Northern Lights had already gone back down. We drove back to Buffalo to spend the night in a hotel so that we could drive to Lake Erie in the morning before returning home.
Due to the harsh winter (complaining about this winter is a theme in my life right now) Lake Erie was currently 96% frozen. Now, when the guide at Niagara Falls told this to us I couldn't really picture it. Then as we drove over the Buffalo skyway towards Wilkenson Pointe we had a great view of the frozen lake. What we saw on Sunday juxtaposed to the free flowing great lake we had seen on Saturday was vastly different.
After that we headed home by a different route (this time staying in NY and driving home via Albany). For a total route that looked like this:
There had been a few times on the drive when my Mom had seen wild turkeys so I was hoping I would eventually see one. As we drove to Lake Ontario I saw one run across the road pretty far in front of it (hardly reacquiring a slow down). Then as we were driving towards Albany I spotted a turkey ahead on the side of the road. And then as I approached the damn thing took off. I think the air pressure from my approaching car lifted it over us or else we would have had one hell of a mess.
It was a pretty nice way to spend Easter weekend, enjoying one of the most beautiful places on earth. And it was fun to go for the ride and see where it took us. This time we got to try the wings at the Anchor Bar and discovered the Woodcock brother's brewery. Who knows what we might find next time!
Well the drive on Friday was one of the smoothest we have had in a long time. In anticipation of possible bad weather we packed the truck to avoid all extra wind resistance. I know I have done this drive a lot of times especially when I recognize truck stops, Denny's, Pilots, and other gas stations along the way. I found myself several times pulling in and saying "Oh I've been here". Also without the wind resistance of the last few trips we didn't use nearly as much gas. We got to TN Friday around 5pm which was just in time to unpack the car and have a nice dinner. Then we got to open Christmas presents with Meghan whom we hadn't seen in almost two months.
On Saturday morning we got up and headed to the store to do some shopping. We planned on having dinner that night with my Uncle and his family and another local family. In total there were eleven of us which definitely makes this the first large party at my house :-) In my honest opinion everything came out awesome. We had some pasta in a marinara sauce, spinach in oil and garlic, potato pizza (mashed potato with mozzarella cheese baked as a pie), artichokes and eggs, chicken cutlets, macaroni and cheese, and a nice salad. For dessert we had pfeffernüsse "pepper nuts" which are german spice cookies baked by Meghan and Panatone which is an an Italian cake with pieces of dried fruit in it.
On Sunday we headed to Atlanta to meet up with family from my Dad's side in what we have named "Not- Christmas" so far it looks like we are going to have a nice tradition of Not- Christmases which will always fall on the weekend after Christmas. We brought a baked rigatoni and cheesecake with us to the party which we had made the day before. The drive was about four and a half hours and is pretty easy consisting of mainly two highways. We only hit traffic when we got right up to Atlanta and two highways (75 and 85 I believe) began merging. When we got to the house there was family galore, some we hadn't seen in years. We hung out talked and caught up with each other for hours before heading back to TN.
On Tuesday we started cooking for New Year's Eve. Now Italian's (and probably a lot of other cultures) believe meat should not be eaten on New Year's Eve. The reason, as my Mom explained, is that you eat fish because fish come from the ocean (water) and is cleansing so that you wash away the bad from the year before and start out fresh. We had linguine in a red pepper, clam and lobster tail sauce, potato pizza, fried artichoke hearts, fried cauliflower, rice balls with cheese, crab cakes, black-eyed-pea patties, fried shrimp, fried scallops, tilapia, cold broccoli salad with lemon and garlic, gardineir and a regular green salad. The very full table looked something like this:
After eating and resting we moved the party from my house to Mom's condo which is outside down town Nashville. There we counted down the last hour of 2013 and waited for the fireworks from the Bash downtown. When we arrived we discovered my Uncle's family had slipped in at some point and set up balloons, and noise makers, poppers and party hats! Then the final seconds ticked away and the fireworks began!
After the fireworks we had a toast to the New Year with Osti Spumanti or sparkling grape juice. And then after some cards we had Italian lemon cake and coffee before heading back out onto the streets and to my house.
The next morning we popped another bottle of Osti for breakfast mimosas and panatone.
The night before I had written 2014 Nashville, TN on the cork in my Mom's condo and left it there for my Mom. On New Year's Day I did the same on the breakfast bottle and will keep it as a momento of my first New Year's in my house.
Basically my Mom put it best on Saturday when she said "It's nice to know we are moving here and we have friends and family already."
I remember when we were young driving into Brooklyn and seeing these amazing beautiful homes decorated with life sized figurines all celebrating Christmas. I remember bits and pieces but my favorite house had life sized figures dressed in tuxedos and fancy dresses as guests at a Christmas party. Other houses had full sized choral singers and toy soldiers and just a wonderful array of lights. Some houses were subdued and classy others were over the top and eye grabbing.
So yesterday when I picked up my Mom from the train station I asked if she would like to take a drive back to Dyker Heights, since this is our last Christmas in NY, and see how the decorations have changed or if they are still the same. She was game so we went home and relaxed for a bit to allow traffic to finish clearing from the commute before we drove in.
Here are some of the highlights from our trip:
This stunning brick home had a giant Nutcracker guarding the front door as snow flakes dotted the building.
In this house Santa Claus looks out from the upstairs window as people walk and drive by enjoying the sights.
Speaking of Santa here he is climbing a ladder up to the roof top of the house on the corner of 86th and 13th avenue (I think)
For the next house I had to pull over and get out to get a picture. In their front yard was a light up pond complete with penguins and swans. :-)
Here are some of the life sized figures that captured my attention as a child: toy soldiers guard this front door lit up beautifully by classic white light lined garland.
This house not only had toy soldiers but angels playing trumpets.
Here was a simply decorated house using lights to mimic garland and red bows. While strings of white lights brought out the architecture of not only the house but the multi-tiered yard.
I took a picture of this house because the front nativity and the figures on the porch are the old fashioned plastic lawn decorations that I love. I prefer them over the new blow up decorations, probably because they remind me of when I was little and everyone had them.
This house is a Christmas wonderland with a giant Nutcracker, toy soldiers, an angel choir, angels playing trumpets, and two happy snowman.
There were so many different houses some that pictures would not do justice like this next house with a carousel, spinning toy soldier, and Christmas music.
Then I took video of several houses as I drove by to show all the figures lining the fences.
It was a nice night filled with holiday cheer. Lots of people lined the sidewalks looking down block after block of decorations.
Thank you to the people of Dyker Heights who probably have as much fun with this as the people who enjoy their displays.
Sunday marked the end of an era for the Met. Starting in 1971 the Met started giving out metal tags as admission tickets. Now they are switching back to paper stickers. Apparently the metal tags cost 3 cents and the paper tickets will only cost a penny . . .times 6 million visitors a year and I guess it adds up. but is it really worth the loss?
Sometimes the best souvenirs are free. :-)
This painting by Caravaggio The Musicians is one of my favorites. The second player from the right is a self portrait if the artist. Caravaggio was known for his use of light and dark to build depth in the painting. His painting of Saint Jerome is a wonderful example of this technique.
This is by Johannes Vermeer called Young woman with pitcher. As soon as I saw this picture I remembered it from studying art in my sophomore year of college. Vermeer often focused on domestic scenes and most of his paintings are set in two rooms in his house. One of his greatest works is Girl with a Pearl Earring, on display in the Hague. The painting inspired a book and then in turn a play and movie.
Giovanni Pannini is a genius . . . . Can't decide which modern Roman monument to paint? Paint all of them as if they were paintings in a gallery! In this picture are many famous works including Michelangelo's Moses, Bernini's statue of Constantine, David, and Apollo and Daphne. Apparently Pannini also included his own version of the Spanish steps (not the final design used).
