sickling

after picking up a few serving dishes at the soho c&b, i met kevin for dinner at one of our local go-to spots, soba-ya, for a quick, tasty dinner. we ordered the santen-mori (three vegetable dishes) of kimpira-gobo, satsuma-imo, and kabocha to shiitake, and a few vegetable tempura as appetizers. i love japanese veggie dishes - they are so simple and SO GOOD. kev had the large sardine hot soba special and i had the mini oyakodon.

when we arrived home, my table-top fiddle leaf fig tree arrived via usps from ohio! it was packaged very carefully in a 2-day priority box with packing peanuts and a warm heating pack, but the leaves were very dirty (white spots all over them) and sickly/damaged upon arrival. also, the top 2 inches of the stem was soft and had fallen to one side. it couldn't have been good for the plant to be packaged and away from sunlight for 2 days, but i think it's also possible that the gardener didn't take very good care of this guy, and it was damaged in transit (possibly frozen, due to the snowpocalypse). i repotted the little guy and wiped down his leaves, and put him in a southern facing windowsill. hopefully it's not too late to save him and it's bright and sunny tomorrow!

here is a photo of him right after i removed him from the box. how sad! stay tuned ...  

snowpocalypse of 2015

we awoke to a very quiet city on tuesday morning. the streets and sidewalks were void of cars and pedestrians. all we heard was the low rumble of snow plows going down seventh ave and the comforting crackle from kevin's burr coffee bean grinder. our new houseplant was settling in nicely by the southwest window, basking in the morning light.

deblasio had implemented a car-train-bus-subway ban starting at 11pm last night, so we decided to walk to work. there was about 6-8 inches of snow on parts of the sidewalk, but for the most part, the streets and most major sidewalks had been cleaned overnight. the temperature was in the mid-30s, not too cold for a 25 minute walk, so i put on my ice breaker base layers, a fleece pullover, and a hard shell jacket and pants! armed with kevin's nikon and freshly brewed coffee in our top pot double-walled stainless steel mugs, we were ready to go!

the walk to work and back home were really nice! with so many people taking the day off or working from home, the streets were quiet and cars and public transportat did not re-enter the streets until 7:30am. maybe we should do the walk a bit more often, well, maybe just on workday holidays or days with terrible weather when it's less crowded out.

during the day, one of my close friends, monica, asked if it was okay to put me down as her older son's emergency contact at his high school. she'd asked us last year to be his emergency contact as well. it feels nice, like we are family. i am almost always at my desk or in the city reachable by my mobile, so of course i accepted.

we made a quick and easy dinner tonight. spicy sesame noodles with chicken, cucumbers, and pea shoots on the side. we've been working on a pot of chicken-pork soup with daikon and seaweed this week as well, good comfort food during these cold days and just like my mama makes it :)