Another thing I won't miss

Our block is just oozing with Americana-style charm today, as is evidenced by the incessant pogo-sticking of this little shi-- uh... kid.

(crank the volume for a fully immersive experience)

The Move: It's On

And how do I know it's on?

Oh, I don't know... maybe the HUGE SUPER GIGANTIC ROLL OF BUBBLE WRAP IN MY LIVING ROOM?!

I can't wait until I find my roller skates! I'm going to lay this puppy down as carpet and BLAM POP POP POP BLAMMO! It will be fun for my neighbors (only-for-five-more-days) downstairs!

And as for getting in shape...

Will and I have been going to Crossfit. What is Crossfit, you ask?

Crossfit is a grassroots fitness movement based out of Santa Cruz, California. It is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martialartists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist. The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.

It's been fun and challenging just to learn a bunch of new stuff, mainly the Olympic-style weightlifting moves. And the biggest challenge is yet to come.

On Saturday, September 25, we have signed up to do a fundraising workout called Fight Gone Bad. Other than the fact that it's to raise money for 3 incredibly good causes, this may prove to be one of the craziest things I've ever done. Maybe crazier than Boot Camp.

Proceeds from this nationwide event go to:

• The Livestrong Foundation
• The Wounded Warrior Project
• The Crossfit Foundation

If you can, please support me with a donation of $5 or more-- you can donate by following this link. (you can also donate via Will if you'd like... or even better, both of us!)

Thanks, and wish me luck!

Tumblr

I went and started a tumblr blog. Figured it would be easier to keep all the design and product images I drool over there instead of jamming up my google reader and that desktop folder labeled "design images" that I never look at anymore.

If you'd like to see what may or may not ever make it's way into the new apartment, check out In Lieu of a Moodboard...

At Least ONE Thing I Will Not Miss...

There have been many challenges in living in our apartment on Sackett St these past three years. It's a top floor walk-up. We have no yard. The living room doesn't get a lot of light. The kitchen looks like it was installed sometime during the Reagan Administration. Shall I continue?

But perhaps the biggest downer of the whole affair has been the layout of the place. They list the apartment at around 1100 square feet, which I think is a slight exaggeration on the part of some shady brokers, but let's just say it is not small. The rooms are big and square and comfortable. The only snag is that our bedroom and the 2nd bedroom we use as an office face Sackett Street. They get a good amount of light. But sadly, our living room is tucked away facing the backyard (that is exclusively used by Apt. 1L). It is quite but gets basically no light. It's not just my lack of green thumb: our apartment is unsuitable to sustain plant life.

The bedroom isn't so bad (if you discount the fact that I took this photo with my iPhone) :

we've got thick velvet curtains and dark roman shades that do well to block the light, and we're early risers, so it's not such a drag.

But the office. Oh, sad office.

The only logical place to put our desks, considering the space required for three sets of bookcases (which I won't show on principle!) to house the books Will would surely die without, is butting up against the windows.

Now Sackett Street is one of the few streets in Carroll Gardens that has a bridge over the BQE at Hicks Street, so we get a LOT of truck traffic. It also used to be a bus route, until that recently got cut.

Long story short, IT'S NOISY IN OUR HOUSE! Actually, it's noisy just outside our house, which is not helpful when my work involves audio recording. Now granted, I know it's dumb to have my desk next to the window, but it's a geographical necessity. And I have some ambient sound blockers and whatnot, but it's not easy.

Especially when one of our neighbors has a leaf blower fetish.

Daily. Multiple times per day. In any weather! (please note: rain in video. Also, turn the sound up-- even with windows closed and the fact that he's three stories down and across the street it's that loud.) Will is convinced that the guy is in a loveless marriage and this is his only escape from the kvetching of his awful wife. I have never seen a wife. All I know is that for the better part of three years, I've marveled as I've watched this man blow a napkin into the street. I don't ever think I've ever seen that gas-guzzling machine used on actual leaves, but he blows winter, summer and spring in addition to fall (when there are actual leaves on the ground). And it blows my ever-lovin' mind.

WHY, LEAF BLOWER MAN?! WHYYYYYY!!!???

All I know is, he is hands down the thing I will miss the LEAST about this apartment. The blower man across the street. (that and whoever plays the flute at 3pm...)

Many Plans for Fall

Hello to the six of you who still look at this blog. Sometimes it makes me sad how it just sits here, unused, save for the occasional VO Tips or Trip Documentation. I tried at the beginning of last year to go for a daily photo post, but I only made it through March 22 (there were some doozies, though).

But.

I am back. With actual projects!

First, we are moving at the end of the month. To a deluxe apartment in the sky-hi-hi on the other side of the Gowanus. It's incredible. We moved to Brooklyn nearly 3 years ago with the express purpose of having a place with a little patch of yard. Then we looked at a bunch of tiny awful apartments and chose our current place because of its spacious rooms. But no yard. This time, we've got a yard and more! From the ad to which we originally replied:

All the Comforts of a House!
950 SF!

Huge Master BR
Smaller 2nd Room: Office or Nursery
Huge L-Shaped LR w/space for second office!
Washer/Dryer
Large closets
Great Storage in Basmt Incl. **Exclusive Cedar Walk-in Closet!
Driveway Parking Space and Garage!
Exclusive Deck and Yard!
Plentiful windows: Tons of Light: 2nd Floor
Central Heat and AIR!

Did you see the part about the Garage? Or the EXCLUSIVE CEDAR CLOSET? It's like we're moving to some insane suburban condo complex! We're pretty excited and feel really lucky that we found such a great place.

I thought it would be fun to blog about designing the new space. I spend enough time drooling over design blogs on the internet, that I thought this would be a great opportunity to put all that drool to work. It should also keep me on track with unpacking. We still have a few never-unpacked boxes that got moved from Will's old Seaport apartment into storage into this apartment. OVER FOUR YEARS AGO.

I vow to you, Faithful Six, that it's not going down like that this time!

The second project was proposed to me over the weekend by a close friend. She says that in the past few months, she's been so busy with work and whatnot that she's fallen off the workout wagon. So to get herself back on, she's challenged some friends to a contest: 12 weeks to get in shape. $50 to participate, and at the end, Winner Takes All.

Will has said he's going to do it, and all I need is a little fight to the death healthy competition to keep me motivated.

I will chart our (?) my weekly progress, menus and workouts here.

Oh, summer 2010. I hardly knew ye. Welcome, fall!