Busy as usual, I am updating here mainly as a form of procrastination. I think I may have had a bit of a burn-out this week. I had been a bit stressed about the insane amount of work and I basically relaxed that a bit this week.
On Tue I came back to the City early in order to go to this discussion about the pros and cons of green roofs versus other less costly and intensive "green" uses such as water retention and painting white to reflect heat. I got to Bowling Green to encounter a mystified guard and another dude who had also not read the email saying that it was postponed until Nov. I was excited to have the extra time to get some work done, but then I didn't do shit until 10. I intended to get up the next morning at my regular time to get the work for my class that day done, but not surprisingly I slept in. I ended up finishing during class.
On Wed I did stay late and get work done, but that was the end of my productivity for the week, besides what I did at my regularly scheduled work. Thu I met up with Eric at Burp Castle and had one too many delicious beers. A CS friend was having his birthday party at Brooklyn Bowl, but by the time I left the Castle, Brandy had gotten them to relocate to Diamond, a bar we just discovered quite close by on Franklin. They have really good beer, which is always a prereq for me. Also a great backyard, discovered a couple months too late. We had a pretty good time hanging out with some CS friends we hadn't seen in awhile, including Seth, Luba, and Nelson. I also got to speak Spanish with a Mexican girl, who is from an hour outside of Tijuana. Apparently there are a lot of Poles there!
I overslept on Fri and thoroughly expected to get to work about an hour late. As luck would have it, the 9:01 express was delayed until... the moment I got there, and I caught it by Indiana Jonesing through the closing doors.
Tao, a member of the Grey Till, was having a gathering at Peculiar Pub in the Village since he had finally acquired his master's degree in math education. I arrived at Penn Station at 9:23, dismayed at the fairly heavy rainfall. I had my bike, and by the time I got to the bar I was completely soaked, save the parts covered by the raincoat. Brandy's timing was perfect as she walked up to me while locking my bike. Peculiar has a huge selection of bottles from all over the world, at quite reasonable prices, <$5 for most. They also had the most friendly door guy I've ever encountered. Everyone was completely sloshed by the time we arrived, and most didn't stay much longer than our beer, and neither did we.
Yesterday we got up late morning as usual. We typically have the same routine on Saturdays when I'm around. We get up at leisure and then stroll to the park to drop off the compost and peruse the farmer's market. We then have a nice big brunch at home with all the goodies before I get to work or whatever. This week the compost group was doing a fundraiser and I was the lucky highest bidder in the silent auction, for which I was rewarded with an apple and pumpkin pie. We also picked up a huge fillet of blackfish, which I managed to turn into a quite delicious dinner. Actually, fish is insanely easy to make.
I worked on the Portland case study for awhile, but did not get nearly as much done as I would have liked, so here I am working on it again. John invited us out to a loft party in Bushwick and we headed out around midnight. The L train was running a shuttle bus so we caught a cab, musing on how nice it is that we can now reliably catch a cab in Brooklyn. As a late coming gentrifier, I do not recall the days when that was not possible. Nor do I recall the days that my landlord describes when the guys at the factory where he worked down the street would walk to the train in pairs or groups to not get robbed. Things change so quickly, so is the way of the city.
The loft was in this amazing old factory. It was shockingly homey for a loft, although apparently the resident had lived there for 10 years. The huge living room had these great old factory windows that covered most of the wall and opened wide to let in tons of fresh air. The view of Manhattan was also pretty spectacular. We had a good time at the party and were refreshed by the fact that the crowd was actually older than us. Most of the CS parties we go to are filled with early 20s travelers. Not that it's bad, but sometimes it's nice to be around older revelers. It also would have been a dream for me if I was single since it became very heavily weighted to one sex by the time we left: the correct sex. John stayed on and surely had a good time.
Today, not too much has gotten done. Brandy was feeling a little low due to the glass of Vodka she gulped before we left last night and she only made a small, but delicious breakfast. The weather today is absolutely gorgeous and we are currently enjoying what may be the last day of open windows and flooding sunlight. I am attempting to work while Brandy paints. Eric commissioned her to paint a life sized velociraptor. He is coming along nicely, but will surely be accompanying us in our living room for some time yet. After breakfast Brandy recalled that today was the last day of the season that the Greenpoint Rooftop Farms would be open. Loving the excuse to get outside, we hopped on our bikes and rode up there. The farm is on top of an old factory in the far northern part of the neighborhood, near to the couch where I crashed during my first week in NYC two summers ago. It was really cool to see all these beautiful veggie growing on top of a factory in the middle of the city. I am definitely beginning to be more enamoured with this city and all of the amazing creative people here. It's a pretty crumbly old city, but that makes it kind of a canvas for creating whatever you wish. (I think I stole that from someone, but not sure).
Now back to cycling in Portland, which I still miss deeply.

Here is a link to a page that contains several interesting videos about local food purveyors.
http://www.vimeo.com/6137263

The one that will come up first is about this woman who has begun turning underutilized Brooklyn back yards into working farms. There is a video about an oyster farmer out on Long Island, a local bread maker, some urban beekeepers, a guy who works out at our CSA farm, etc. I think there is actually one about the rooftop farm.

Polish Pride

This week was pretty crazy since, not only am I insanely busy with school, but my friend Cameron was in town visiting from Portland. Luckily she has several other friends around, so she too was busy.
On Fri I caught an early train and met her on the L platform at Union Sq. While I was waiting for her I ran into both Joe, a CS friend, and Laura, our roommate from last summer. This was remarkable b/c I never run into people on the subway. I also met a guy on NJ Transit who works for the Project for Public Spaces, which is a local non-profit that works to reclaim public space from the car. I ended up chatting with him the whole way and will hopefully be going in there for an info interview in the near future. My commute turned into a rather social one indeed.
I took Cameron to Lomzynianka, our favorite Polish place, which is also right around the corner. Here you can get dinner for two for $12. We ordered way too much, and ate the same and so out tummies were heavy with grease when we went to my place for drinks. We sat up on the roof and had some good conversations about cities and transportation (Cameron is an avid cyclist) over a bottle of burgundy. She kept exclaiming all weekend about how great NYC is.
After the wine we went down to Barcade to meet some of her friends. Games were played and beers were delicious as usual. I got to a new level on Tapper, which I didn't think existed. I felt like a little kid again, giddy with excitement. As usual, nobody cared. Brandy also came out and we all piled into a couple cabs to meet some more of her friends in the LES.
Besides a couple of places, LES is a complete piece of shit, and tonight was no exception. We went to two terrible places and I stayed out too late, drank too much.
Sat I got up too late and spent about 6 hours working on trying to finish the cycling research study for John.
That evening we went up to 117th & 8th to a little party that one of the friends was throwing for Cameron. We had a nice time hanging out with her the last night, and her friends are fairly cool despite not being the first type I would think to hang out with. I mean, shit, dude had a plasma screen TV. On the ride home we got into this huge discussion about social engineering. We determined that it is pretty much a terrible idea, both politically and the potential for abuse.
Sunday I worked ALL day. I had to spend a couple hours trying to finish up the cycling study, which is now almost done except for a couple questions. The Polish football team must have done something good because there were Poles dressed in garb and honking horns all over the neighborhood all day long. I was not so annoyed by the honking because it was celebratory vs. being impatient assholes.
After the cycling work had to go through some documents that discussed greenhouse gas emissions inventorying and allocation for regions and come up with questions and thoughts on it for today. The weather was fantastic so we decided to take our work outside. After failing to make lunch due to the beans taking way longer than expected, we ate a quick salad and headed to the park to hang out for awhile. There were some guys tossing a disc, but I was able to control myself and got some work done. Eventually some kickball guy started blasting really shitty rap music, which was the sign to move on to the coffee shop.
I have decided that I quite like El Beit. Their tables are really nice (good size and height, stable) and the chairs are pretty decent. It also seems like there is enough turnover that I can get a good spot by waiting only a short time and then zone completely out for hours.
I treated myself to a Clover coffee since I had been good about not having coffee all semester. Alas it turned out to be a little overroasted and watery, but still nice to have coffee. On one of my many piss breaks some guy was locked in the bathroom and I had to get the manager. He seemed pretty embarrassed.
I stayed up pretty late working and am now rather tired and trying to stay awake in GIS class.