Goal #40

Goal #40: pack and sort.

I am moving.  Again.  Much packing and sorting is required.  It will not all happen this week, but I'd like to make a dent in it.

Recap of Goal #39: mixed bag this week.  I accomplished many things on my to-do list, but somehow managed not to free myself from the burden of this pile of papers that's waiting to be sorted, although I did get rid of a few things.  But I accomplished a few other things, including finishing up with the contact lists that I was supposed to do last week, sent out pics of K's wedding, built a mobile version of my website, and even got groceries!

Quote of the Day

"The pursuit of truth, properly considered, shouldn't stop short of insanity."
 -- Errol Morris

How We Decide -- Take 2

This is another one of those cognitive science books which have been so popular lately, with me and everyone else.  Like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, it's full of fun facts and ideas that I immediately wanted to tell someone else, so we could talk about how cool/weird/unusual it was.  So here I go!

As the title suggests, Jonah Lehrer's book is an analysis of how we make decisions. He begins with an investigation into the snap decision processes of people who don't have time to think - quarterbacks, major league batters, soldiers choosing whether or not to take a shot when they have only fractions of a second to consider the circumstances.  What we learn is that our brains, specifically the anterior cingulate cortices (or ACCs), are trained to recognize certain patterns in your environment before you even realize what it is you're seeing.  The recognition is completely subconscious.  With time and practice, your brain can become quite good at making these decisions.  You'll know where to throw the football, when to swing, and whether to shoot.

That's probably not a surprise to anyone.  We've all heard that "practice makes perfect."  What I didn't know though - this is one of those fun facts - is that it's confusion in the ACC that causes seasickness!  It's used to your body being on solid, unmoving ground.  When you're on a boat or ship and pitching around, your ACC gets confused.  Your eyes are telling your brain that you're upright and standing still, but the signals coming from the balance center in your inner ear are telling your brain that you're tipping all over the place.  These conflicting signals cause dopamine levels in your brain to rise and overwhelm the receptors in the ACC - your brain doesn't know what motion to expect next.  Over the course of a few hours, as your dopamine receptors adjust to the motion of the ocean, seasickness recedes.  (If you can't wait that long or have especially sensitive semicircular canals, motion sickness patches block the communication signals that reach your brain via the vestibular nerve so your dopamine levels don't rise in the first place.)

Interestingly, dopamine also affects the nucleus accumbens, the primitive "greed center" of the brain.  Follow that argument out to Lehrer's final conclusion and we learn that, more or less, lack of dopamine regulation makes for terrible stock trading decisions, poor personal investments, and uncontrolled credit card spending.  Other articles back this up and I've heard the same argument other places, so I'll leave it at that.  (Surprise, surprise, the nucleus accumbens is also the pleasure center for addictive drug users.)

From there we move to the prefrontal cortex - now we're talking about how we think about decisions, the conscious ones.  Among other crises, Lehrer examines the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire.  There is an extensive analysis of the probable path of the fire and actions of the firefighters here (as well as in the book Young Men and Fire, if you're really interested), so I'll try to keep that to a minimum.  Suffice it to say, a crew of smokejumpers found themselves just a few hundred yards from a fire they couldn't outrun or control.  The younger fighters were scared, responded to their emotions, and tried to run nonetheless; they were consumed by the flames.  The foreman also knew he couldn't outrun the fire, but unlike his younger and less experienced comrades, he controlled his emotions.  He didn't run.  He considered his options.  He did something that had never been done before (but has been used often since): he started an escape fire at his own feet.  He burned the grass and shrubs in the area near him so that when the big fire came roaring through, it would find no fuel there and would pass over him.  Somewhat miraculously, it worked.  The foreman's ability to reason through the crisis, to exercise executive control over his instincts, saved his life.

But sometimes executive control isn't the best choice; it's terrible when it comes to self-awareness.  That's when emotions should rule the day since it turns out that, in many circumstances, self-analysis leads to less self awareness rather than more.  For example, when picking which variety of strawberry jam you like, which painting is your favorite, or even which house you should buy, people who "went with their gut" were happier with their selection over the long term than people who took the time to weigh the pros and cons.  The more time people spent deliberating about a decision, the more tied up they got in their own process and the less frequently they were satisfied with their choices.  Sometimes, I guess, you just know what you like.  (Note to self: remember this!)

The same logic also often applies to physical actions: more information and analysis leads to worse performance.  Have you ever overthought your golf swing or allowed one bad performance to make you nervous before every performance for the next year? Sometimes it's better not to think; just do it.

Your brain is at constant war with itself, seeking pleasurable rewards and trying to avoid costs and pain. Often, the avoidance behaviors win out: this is why you have pols who support their candidate's platform even when that candidate's position is anathema to what the party normally believes or is in conflict with their own personal opinion.  It's easier to blindly support a candidate than it is to examine the disconnect. "We all silence the cognitive dissonance through self-imposed ignorance."  We distort our own thought processes until we reach our desired conclusion, which is easier to justify because it's what we want.

The gist of the book (after all that recounting of fun stories) is this: when people have to make complex subjective choices, they are more satisfied in the long term if they let the choice marinate in their subconscious brain and do what feels right. If the choice is rational and can be solved purely by analysis of information, the conscious brain wins out - it makes better choices when the variables are quantifiable.  This seems counter-intuitive, so I'll say it again: simple problems require reason; complex ones need a little gut instinct.

One last example to illustrate this.  Poker.  In tournaments where there are clearly players worse than you and the stakes aren't that high, the decisions are simple.  Stick with the statistics, play the numbers.  But when the going gets tough in the final table at the World Series of Poker where all the players are great and you're playing for millions, a good player will listen to that voice that says "this doesn't make any sense, but do it - it feels right."  The game is complex and there are lots of variables - multiple decks, piles of chips, bluffing, bluffing that you're bluffing, tells, fake tells, and so on.  Go with your gut.

Weird, right?  But cool.  Aren't you glad we talked about it?

Adventures in Eating

At the beginning of the summer, I began a joint and rather unfocused effort to work out more (which included biking and running) and eat healthier (including fewer complex carbs, less refined sugar, and more produce).

Why did I do this?  Black beans, it turns out, are a superfood. I've never liked them.  Not refried beans either.  But I was out in Breck and had a really good wrap with black beans, cheese, avocado, and some other goodies.  "I need to eat more of these," I thought to myself.  So I did.  I set out to like them, and I think I can officially say that I do!  I even made a black bean and veggie soup from scratch not too long ago!

Now I'm working on the whole mushroom family.  I've had a lukewarm relationship with mushrooms for a while - they've been okay in a sauce or as a subtle flavor, but not as the big show.  It's a work in progress, but there's progress indeed.

And just the other day I decided what my next food love was going to be, but for now it's escaping me.

What I'm Reading Now -- Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

K read this book last year and was heard regularly during the reading laughing out loud.  She even read some of the funnier portions to anyone in the room; it's one of those types of books.

I'm listening to the audiobook, which is interesting.  I'm not an Office watcher, so I've never actually heard Mindy Kaling's voice until now - she reads the audiobook herself.  I don't know whether it will be more or less funny than imagining her voice in my head while reading the words myself, and unless I also spend the time to read the paper book, I'll never know.  But here I go, embarking on my audiobook journey!

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 44

Otherwise titled: Brighton Beach Memoirs

Recently, my college alumni group planned an outing to see Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Repertory Theater.  Apparently Neil Simon is a gaping hole in my cultural knowledge, because I had no idea what the show was about, or that it was the first in a trilogy which also includes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound.

You know what?  The play was great!  It was funny and poignant.  The set, a simple two-walled house, was perfect.  Excellent work, Rep.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Weeks 41, 42, 43

Otherwise titled: Congratulations, K!

Something big happened this weekend - so big it required three different dresses!  The pictures tell the story:

Rehearsal dinner

Ceremony

 Reception

All those people in the last picture are cousins I don't get to see very often, so it was really great of them to come in town to celebrate the occasion with K and J!

Goal #39

Goal #39: read, sort, do, recycle.

This week I'm continuing my life recovery effort.  I have a very long to-do list and lots of papers and mail to get through.  This is not a particularly ambitious goal (for the second week in a row), but it will probably take all of my free time.

If there's any extra, I'll carry on with cleaning up my contact list.  (I have to say, just doing the little bit I've done so far, an electronic list is way easier to manage than the phone books in which everything has to be written in pencil. So simple to make changes or just click "delete" - is that a good thing?)

Recap of Goal #38: even with an easy goal like the one I picked, it still really didn't happen.  I got about halfway through the C's in my phone.  So busy.

Trendy Looks I Can't Rock

1. Skinny Jeans

It took a long time before I bought my first pair of skinny jeans.  Now that I have a pair (one - singular), I have a strict rule that I wear them with nothing but knee-high boots.

They can be super cute with flats or heels:

However, you've got to be skinny to pull that off.  Especially you have to have no hips, thighs, or butt.  Otherwise, it just ends up looking like this, and nothing should ever look like that.

Although maybe I can keep up this running thing for a while and manage to rock the skinnies with some heels.  TBD.

2. Shorts as Classy Weekend Wear

I wish I could make this happen.  I think my problem here is that I don't have classy shorts.  That seems like sort of a prerequisite for an outfit in this category:

Most of my shorts are more casual, and it seems weird to wear them with heels.  Maybe that's the tipping point.  I don't know.  If I try it out (and it works), I'll let you know.

Goal Fail

After two great days last week of running at least 4 miles, I've gone four days now without doing a damn thing.  Fail.

Yes, I just described days which involved running as great.  Write that down.

Goal #38

Goal #38: clean up gmail and phone contacts.

It just needs to happen.  Things are getting a little out of control, and this will be a good mobile activity for me in what will be a very busy week.

Recap of Goal #37: I did it - 4.27 miles!  That was Monday.  Then I did it again on Friday - not quite so far: 4.16 miles or so.

Brooklyn, U.S.A. -- A Philosophical Woman About Town

Shorter post this time, thank goodness!  It's been a bit of an undocumented whirlwind with not too many pictures though, so I'll try to reconstruct it as best I can.  Bear with me:

Wednesday my big outing was actually a small one - a trip to the Met to see the relatively-newly-opened Islamic galleries (technically it's called the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, but that seems like a lot of tongue-wagging just to avoid saying the word "Islamic", which is pretty much off limits in this town).  Anyway...

Especially from the earlier years, much of the art on display is decorative - stoneware, metalwork, carvings, etc.  It's lovely stuff, but I much prefer to see decorative pieces in a full setting (hence my love of the Frick and now the Morgan), rather than just as isolated pieces.  So imagine my surprise and delight when I came across this:

And this:

This is not to say that the individual pieces aren't incredible - they are.

Pierced globe, designed as an incense burner 

Bookbinding in leather and papier-mache

As you get into the later years of the empires, more drawing and painting starts to show up.  It's quite intricate, but I didn't take any pictures.  There is a wealth of info on the Met website, so you should check it out.

I did do a quick run at the end through a few of the modern galleries to guage differences from MoMA, and then to see my favorite guy yet again:

Wheat Field With Cypresses 

Women Picking Olives

I also saw Monet's The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog), which I adore.

I even managed to find one piece in the modern galleries that I liked:

5 P.M., Jennifer Bartlett

I had a couple of hours to kill after getting evicted from the Met and before my evening plans began, so I stopped in at a Starbucks on E. 51st to do some work, where I had my coffee bought for me by a former NBA player.  How nice.  And I got some work done, to boot.

The aforementioned evening plans were to meet E and see our friend D do his thing at Trapeze School New York, where he is an instructor (in addition to being a doctor).  How cool is that?  What we were watching that night was staff training so we didn't get to participate, but it was so fun just to watch them flip around like crazy.

A few of E's other friends joined us and we went out to eat and drink the night away at Fedora, where they have delicious and cleverly-named cocktails.  For food, I had a bite of some sweetbreads (!), and E and I shared a fancy grilled cheese with potato straws.

Thursday I got a slow start, but eventually caught up with E to go see Book of Mormon!!  Her friend C has a connection, so we were able to get two of the hottest tickets in town - and I can see why, because it was phenomenal!  So funny and irreverently wonderful.  It was like watching the world's best-ever episode of Glee, with a mostly male cast.

I met up with L when she got off work and we walked some more of the High Line, which was much less crowded and hence much more enjoyable, although we only made it as far as 26th because we could hear Doughnut Plant calling (again).  Yes, we had doughnuts as an appetizer to our dinner.  You're jealous.  There was a rose cream doughball (smaller than a donut, but bigger than a doughnut hole), a peanut butter doughball with banana cream, and a vanilla bean doughnut with blackberry jam.  So far, we're five for five - although with doughnuts, I think that's easy to do.

Dinner was a group affair with L, D, E, and some more of her friends at a place L knew of: Ovest Pizzoteca.  D and I shared a very simple salad and Chelsea Pizza with some smoked cheese on it, and it was sooo good!

At the end of that night, I bid farewell to L and went home to C's to look after her adorable pup Telulah.

Friday was a logistics-filled day. I trekked back over to E's, where all my stuff is, so I could do some work and start the process of packing.  Then we somehow managed to coordinate a nearly-perfect meeting of three of us at C's all at the same time - there were four people here crashing/dogsitting, and only one set of keys.  You can see how this would be a challenge.

I left them to concern themselves with the keys and went out to meet S for dinner at Apiary, a place he apparently frequents.  After having some of their food, I can see why.  I started with the Swiss chard and ricotta ravioli as an app, and had the pork chop with polenta and escarole for my main.  And since we sat there for so long catching up (it had been probably a year and a half since I'd seen him), I also had the vanilla bean panna cotta for dessert.

One of S's favorite spots is a wine bar called Terroir; after dinner we went to their Murray Hill location, which I had never been to before.  It was not very crowded - bad for them, good for talking.

Saturday I finally had a major day of sleeping in, and hung out with Telulah.  Then I met up with E for yoga, followed by dinner at Bareburger.  I had the pesto red pepper burger with cajun chicken (as recommended), and E and I stopped at Cocoa Bar which, despite being massively disorganized and having semi-competent employees, supplied me with warm and tasty mint hot chocolate.

And, in New York style, I'm spending the rest of the evening sitting on the stoop and watching the world go by.

The Song I'm Loving Today

Welcome to Wherever You Are (Bon Jovi)

For some reason, when I think about musicians I love, Bon Jovi isn't on the list.  But then I listen to some of his stuff, and I love it!  He is a Jersey rocker in the Springsteen style, but designed for a younger generation (although Springsteen certainly still resonates: see here, for just one example).  He can do serious jams or more sentimental stuff, with enough rock to keep it from feeling sappy.  My latest obsession:



Maybe we're all different but we're still the same
We all got the blood of Eden running through our veins.
I know sometimes it's hard for you to see,
You're caught between just who you are and who you wanna be.

If you feel alone and lost and need a friend,
Remember every new beginning is some beginning's end.

Welcome to wherever you are,
This is your life, you've made it this far.
Welcome, you've gotta believe
That right here, right now, you're exactly where you're s'posed to be.
Welcome to wherever you are.

When everybody's in and you're left out,
And you feel you're drowning in a shadow of a doubt,
Everyone's a miracle in their own way,
Just listen to yourself, not what other people say.

When it seems you're lost, alone, and feelin' down,
Remember everybody's different, just take a look around.

Welcome to wherever you are,
This is your life, you've made it this far.
Welcome, you've gotta believe
Right here, right now, you're exactly where you're s'posed to be.

Be who you wanna be,
Be who you are,
Everyone's a hero,
Everyone's a star.

When you wanna give up and your heart's about to break,
Remember that you're perfect, God makes no mistakes.

Welcome to wherever you are,
This is your life, you've made it this far.
Welcome, you've gotta believe
Right here, right now, you're exactly where you're s'posed to be.

Welcome to wherever you are,
This is your life, you've made it this far.
I said welcome, you've gotta believe
Right here, right now, welcome.

[Nice nod to Semisonic's "Closing Time" in line six.]

Brooklyn, U.S.A. -- So Many Days, So Many Things!

Okay, I'm breakin' this up into days - it's been too long!

Friday
Most of the day Friday was spent blogging (this takes a lot of time!) and working, but I did some museums in the afternoon and evening.

I don't really get modern art.  What MoMA has going for it, though, is that its collection starts in the mid- to late-19th century, so it has a number of what I consider classic pieces as well.  Once you get past 1920 or so though, it's all kinda lost on me.  I mean, this?  Really?

What is this, actually?

Except photographs.  I like photographs from any era.  But really, this is art.  My favorite!

 

So exciting!

Remember a few weeks ago when T and I went to Springfield and saw the Dana-Thomas House?  Well, when he made the initial outdoor panelwork for the house, the otherwise brilliant Frank Lloyd Wright used plaster and paint - not, as the tour guide said, "the best weatherproof material."  The pieces on the house have been recast in resin, but at MoMA, they have one of the originals, in plaster:

The real deal

About the time Charles and Ray Eames were perfecting their techniques for bending and molding plywood (later used to make their famous lounge and ottoman), it came to their attention that American servicemen returning from war were being tortured by the metal braces used at the time to stabilize wounded legs.  The metal splints would amplify vibrations experienced by the ships transporting the wounded, and often would make injuries worse.  The Navy commissioned 150,000 of these splints:

Ha.  Now that's modern art with appreciating!

From MoMA, I walked and bussed it over to The Morgan Library and Museum, which was phenomenal.  The Morgan Library portion of it is very much in the style of the Frick Collection - a whole, lived-in room - furniture, draperies, art, the works.  I love that.  The Frick still wins as my leading museum, but the Morgan, though small (just 4 rooms) is a must-see.  The collection of books is stunning, and when it's all surrounded by heavy mahogany and red damask, it's just that much better.  A Gutenberg Bible?  A 1530 bronze-cast globe?  A letter from James Madison?  Yes, please.  Keep 'em coming!

The museum portion of The Morgan Library and Museum had a fantastic (though again, small) exhibit on the words of Winston Churchill with letters, telegrams, video, his honorary American citizenship papers, and his Nobel Prize.  There was also a slightly less enthralling (to me, anyway) exhibit on Venetian drawing.  Really great stuff, all.  Oh, and very small exhibitions of Ellsworth Kelly sculptures and an homage to the avant garde opera Einstein on the Beach. And, to boot, an adorable museum shop and lovely-looking restaurant, The Morgan Dining Room, though it was closed by the time I got there.  Gah!  And one more thing!  There was a string duo playing cello and violin in the lobby!  So wonderful!

Saturday
Saturday involved a lot of rain and wet shoes and subway riding.  E and I went deep into the heart of the Bronx to visit the New York Botanical Garden.  As our subway came out from underground, much to our dismay, it was pouring down rain.  Buckets.  We waited for a bit at the subway station once we arrived and it did subside a bit, but the ground was puddle-y and our feet spent the day is a gross sog of wet shoes.

The garden, however, was lovely - and uncrowded due to the inclement weather (again).  The rain did stop and the sun even came out, and it turned into a beautiful day and a beautiful stroll around the garden.  We crossed several times over the Bronx River, which runs through the garden and is Manhattan's only fresh water river.

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a place I went to with L last summer: Dinosaur Bar-B-Que - which E gamely went for despite being a vegetarian.  She had the "veggie platter" (aka a collection of side dishes), while I had pulled pork and a couple of sides myself.  And we both had some delicious Ithaca Apricot Wheat Ale which I could have had a lot more of.

Later that night, we were heading out to a birthday party for a friend of a friend (that's right, we didn't know them, but we went anyway), and we saw these amazing birds just playing around in the sky right above our apartment building!

Sunday
Sunday was a pretty relaxed day.  E had discovered some outdoor yoga at Chelsea Piers, so we traversed lower Manhattan to enjoy a beautiful day of sunshine!  And I walked part of the High Line on the way there.  It was lovely, but packed!  The fact that it was a beautiful weekend day probably didn't help.

I went for a brief jog afterwards, and we strolled through Chelsea looking at all the stylish people on our way home to get ready for our big trip to Broadway!  E's friend C has access to cheap tickets to lots of shows, and she happened to have some for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, so we went!

It's true, this show got terrible reviews when it opened (and even before).  They had lots of technical issues, and I can see why, what with people flying all over the theater!  General consensus was that the music was disappointing, especially considering Bono's involvement in the production.  Personally, I thought the instrumental music was, for the most part, better than the vocal pieces.  Not that the singers were bad, the pieces just seemed to lack...something.  And while it wasn't a great show, it was certainly fun.

And after, we went around the corner to Shake Shack and had so much good/bad food!  They have frozen custard there which is purportedly based on the custard at Ted Drewes - and it might be true, because it tastes an awful lot like it!  I got the chocolate shake version, E got it mixed with fig compote.  C went for the big kahuna, the Shack Stack, which is a burger and a cheese-stuffed-and-fried portobello mushroom cap.  She gave me a bite, and it was certainly deliciously terrible for me!  I will be back.

Monday
I worked in the morning (as usual), then did a walking tour of the financial district, including stopping by the 9/11 Memorial.  I was a day early, but they were already shutting things off for the ceremony the next day.

From there I worked my way uptown to Westsider Books - another used book store in the grand tradition of being an overstuffed fire hazard.  Plus they have a rare book room with some interesting finds.

I jumped on the 1 train at 79th and Broadway and headed north, and I saw the last lost station at 91st Street, the one I couldn't get to last week!  You really have to have your eyes peeled, because it's a small station and the conductors slow down not at all when they're barreling uptown.

I got off near Columbia University to visit the Book Culture store on 112th.  The main floor feels like a traditional bookstore, although definitely erring towards the brainy/nerdy.  Upstairs is organized according to academic department, and that's where the students go to buy their books.  There's lots to see just browsing though, and if you're interested in used books (they have a huge literature section upstairs and lots of other popular stuff), that's the place to be.  One annoyance, they make everyone check every bag - even my little purse!  I hate that!  Sure, if I had a backpack or big shopping bags or whatever, I can see it.  But my purse I'd like to hold on to.

Since I was so far north, I decided to head over and take a peek at the northern reaches of Central Park, which I'd never seen!  Just as lovely as the south, but much less crowded.

My last bookstore stop was Rizzoli's on West 57th, and it is beautiful!  It is something to see, even if you're not interesting in browsing or purchasing books.  But if you are, you should know it has a very small literature section, leaning instead heavily in the direction of architecture, art, design, fashion, photography, and the like.  They also have a very small music section on the top floor, where I bought the last copy they had of a CD they were playing in the store - in fact, I bought the play copy: There's No Leaving Now by The Tallest Man On Earth.  I'm happy to loan it out!

On my way to dinner in Tribeca with E and some friends, I saw this building.  This is what I love about cities.  They have to be creative with their use of space - every store, restaurant, apartment, and office has to work with the quirks in its particular building.  Even "big box" type stores are different when they're jammed into an urban environment and not in a design-your-own strip mall.  And if rehab was done right and you keep your eyes open, there is beautiful architecture everywhere:

Tuesday
As per usual, I spent the morning working again, and listening to the names being read via the live webcast of the 9/11 Memorial Ceremony.

After my afternoon jog I headed into Manhattan for the opening of the Richard Phillips exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery.   Why?  Do I really care about paintings of Lindsay Lohan and Sasha Grey?  No.  Actually I don't even know who Sasha Grey is.  But I thought just being at an opening might be fun anyway - and it seems like a very NYC thing to do!

Needing food, I wandered around lower midtown and Chelsea looking for an acceptable place for a woman on her own who really just wanted to read her book to eat.  Sort of a wine-bar-type, but not too dark, and just crowded enough to know the food was good, but not so crowded it would be too loud or I'd be a waste of space at the bar.  Eventually I found it - the Silk Rd. Tavern on West 22nd street between 5th and 6th.  It only opened in the beginning of June, which probably explains why it's not too crowded yet; when people discover it, it will be.  I had a light and refreshing Allagash White to drink (I had actually gone looking for wine, but I had never seen this beer before, so why not?), and some crispy barbeque pork tacos with carrots and pickled onions, but instead of being served in little baby taco shells, they were served in crispy, house-made wonton wrappers.  Mmm mmm good.  (Allagash, it turns out, is a very eco-friendly small brewery in Maine.  Happy to support them!)

11 Years Later

Random Links

How to drive a rover.

I have never wanted HBO so badly in my life!!  But at least I have their new song to enjoy.

In my next life, I will come back as this bulldog: just stare, wonder, and walk away.

Hi there, baby kangaroo.

Book spine poetry.

Here is St. Louis, summer edition.

Goal #37

Goal #37: run four miles.

This seems dumb.  Four miles is not that far, really.  But see, I'm not a "runner" in the traditional sense.  L and I are going to do a 5K next month, so I've been running a bit to get ready for that, but the longest run I've completed so far in my training is 3.4 miles - which is, for the record, more than 5K.  But I'd like to at least be able to say I went a full four.  If I'm feeling really good, maybe I'll go farther, but I doubt that.

Recap of Goal #36: major progress!  My maps will never be finished, but there's so much more stuff on them now than there was a week ago!  Here they are, if you'd like to take a peek:

Food
Shopping
Fun Around Town

There are a gazillion things I forgot.  While I was adding one restaurant, I'd think of six others, and there was no way I could keep all that in my head.  Please comment with additions!

What I'm Reading Now -- How We Decide

There have been a spate of books in the fields of cognitive science and behavioral economics lately, all expressing (or trying to) in layman's terms how it is that our brains work.  There's Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, The Female Brain and The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, Musicophilia by Oliver Sachs, and those are just the ones that come quickly to mind.  Like I said, a spate.

Since everyone is on the bandwagon and I do think this subject is interesting, I figured I might as well start somewhere.  So here I go with Jonah Lehrer.

Brooklyn, U.S.A. -- Green Space, the Underworld, and Books

Are you ready for lots of pictures and even more words?  I hope so...

Tuesday was a rainy, rainy day.  It rained pretty hard early in the morning, then was miserable and overcast and drizzly all day.  I seized a midday break in the rain to take a trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which is a lovely oasis of green along eastern edge of Prospect Park, right where Prospect Heights and Crown Heights meet.  Probably due to the fact that it was a work day in an already short week and the unfortunate weather (which I didn't mind a bit), the garden was sparsely populated and I had a lovely afternoon stroll.

 The rose garden from above

 Possibly the most perfect rose ever

 The Cherry Walk

 The Rock Garden

 Chiles in the Herb Garden

 Magnolia Plaza

 Entrance to the Fragrance Garden

Japanese Garden

 What a lovely place to spend the afternoon!

Wednesday dawned overcast as well, so I spent the morning working in E's apartment and pondering what I could do in case of rain.  I decided to go exploring.  I had heard about the lost City Hall Station, so I set off to find it.

I stood mid-platform at the Brooklyn Bridge stop and double-checked with the conductor when he poked his head out of the window to make sure everyone was clear of the train before closing the doors.  He seemed to be just waiting for someone to ask about it.  "Sure! Hop on!"  He came out of his little compartment and warned me that the lights weren't on so it wouldn't look as good as it did in the pictures.  He told me when it was coming and which side to look out (the right, as the train is going forward).

It's true that the station doesn't look as sparkly as it does in those pictures, and it really was too dark to get any pictures of my own, but it's all there.  The arched entrance, the big "City Hall" in tiles on the walls, the overhead glass.  Even in its current dingy state, it's clear that it's a beautiful station.

My friendly conductor asked if I was going to stay on the train and ride uptown.  I really had no intention to do that, but neither did I have anywhere else to be, so I said yes.  That seemed like the right answer.  "Well," he said, "keep your eyes peeled between Brooklyn Bridge and Canal Street.  You'll pass through the Worth Street Station, another one they don't use anymore.  And there's another one at 18th Street.  And if you get on the 1, there's a small station at 91st Street on the Upper West Side that's closed down, but you can still see it if you're looking."

What a fount of information!  I was so fascinated by the City Hall Station and this lost underworld of the city, that I just rode around for a while.

I rode up to 28th on the 6, got off and walked to 33rd, got back on and rode to Grand Central, where I wandered through the dining and market halls to see what was on offer.  (I didn't I walked across the street to the south entrance of the Grand Central/42nd St station and found this lovely old entrance inside the beautiful Chanin Building.

I rode back downtown looking for the lost stations, but I liked the tilework at 28th Street so much that I went back just to snap a pic.  And I found another awesome subway entrance in a nice office building.

 28th Street (obviously)

Astor Place is neat also, but the light in the station was really yellow, so the picture looks funny.

I checked out the other two "lost" stations on the 6 - Worth and 18th Streets - and they're there, just like he said.  They're on the west side of the tracks, to the right as you're coming downtown.  They're hard to see because all the windows on the train just reflect the lights from inside the train around all over the place.  It's helpful to have a magazine or newspaper to shield some of the reflection.  They're pretty full of graffiti, which is a shame, but there they are.  It's amazing!  It's like you get to see the old, sometimes glorious, sometimes grimy underbelly of the city - which, in fact, you are!  It's so cool.

[As a semi-aside: there is some fun fiction about the development of this fine city, much of it by Pete Hamill.  A couple that I've read are Downtown: My Manhattan (which is actually not fiction) and Forever, and I have but haven't yet read two more of his: North River and Tabloid City, so I'm not sure if those have as much historical development as Downtown and Forever.  Plus there's Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin, which I'm reading now; it's set around the turn of the 20th century at the opening.  There's Edward Rutherfurd's tome New York, which would take me several lifetimes to read I think, so I haven't tried.  And a gazillion others, but those are what I can come up with right now.]

I took one more ride through City Hall Station, then hopped off when the train returned to the Brooklyn Bridge stop heading uptown, and did something I can't believe I've never done: walked the Brooklyn Bridge!  I've driven it (okay, cabbed it), been under it on a ferry, taken pictures of it from both sides, but I've never actually traversed from one side to the other on foot - until now.

They just don't build bridges like they used to.

The nearly-completed Freedom Tower through the bridge cables.

Looking up from directly beneath one of the arches.

So over the bridge I went, for a fairly uneventful rest of the day.  I stopped by a bookstore an grocery to poke around and pick up some foodstuffs, and went for another run through the park to finish out the afternoon.

Thursday was book day!  I did a tour of a few indies before meeting L to go shopping.  My first stop was McNally Jackson Books in Nolita.  Of the three I visited, it felt like the most put together, the most organized, definitely the cleanest, but also still quirky and fun with a fabulous collection of notecards.  My fave of the three.  It was here that I picked up a book for E to read on the train: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel.

From there I walked uptown just a bit to Shakespeare & Co.'s Noho location.  It's just off the NYU campus, and it feels like a college bookstore catering to its crowd.  Almost the entire main floor is fiction and film studies, with a large portion of the lower level devoted to course books and playwriting (NYU is home to the famous Tisch School for the Arts, which explains all the film and drama books).

The last bookstore of the day was East Village Books, a used book store in the classic sense.  Things were only vaguely organized, you could hardly turn around without knocking over a pile of books on the floor or teetering on the edge of a shelf, the owner (if that's who he was) didn't seem particularly interested in the fact that I was there or might buy a book, in fact, he seemed vaguely annoyed.  As a consequence, despite finding a book that I wanted but really don't need (Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg), I didn't buy it.

Then I was off to meet L near her office in midtown for some shopping.  After much consternation, we found her a new pair of jeans, then set off to reward ourselves with doughnuts for dinner from Doughnut Plant just a little bit south in Chelsea.  What a delicious idea!  We each got one: coconut cream for her, cashew and orange blossom for me.  Then we split them, which made an already delicious idea doubly good.

I had a few minor pedestrian misadventures getting back home, but they overshadowed neither the doughnuts nor the fact that I found a wine shop still open at 10pm.