First Day of School

I think I will always pause on the first Thursday after Labor Day to remember that it's the first day of school. My school, that is. After 13 years of first Thursdays, it feels natural to have a lasting memory, an imprint. For reasons I'm not quite certain of, the second Thursday in June, also known as the last day of school, doesn't have quite the same resonance, possibly because once high school came along, the vagaries of exam schedules made the last couple weeks of the school year less uniform. First days, though, everyone was the same.

I find it especially surreal this morning that I get out of the subway on the corner where I grew up. I take my subway to work each day. If I took the northwest exit instead of the southwest one, I would be fewer than 50 feet from my house. Where my parents would be awake and preparing for their days. The house from which I left on each of those first Thursdays after Labor Day to walk the five, and then three, blocks to school. Much of the neighborhood is different from when I walked those blocks. On the route to school, not a single store remains in its originally remembered incarnation, but the number of steps it takes from my front door to school are unchanged. I guess I'm rather pleased that my walk to work takes me in the opposite direction - too much familiarity might breed contempt.

The last first Thursday after Labor Day on which I went to school was the last first day of school I enjoyed, so my happy memories are tinged bittersweet by what came after - a fairly unremarkable four years of college. There was an excitement borne of the order of first days unreplicable at college, where every man is for himself and the campus is a disparate web of unrelated classrooms; where books aren't waiting for you at class, but rather waiting for you at the end of a very long line at the town bookshop; where a week could go by before you reconnect with a friend because he's a polisci major and you're a math major and your paths never cross; where teachers have private closed-door offices and going to see one doesn't necessitate seeing the others.

A former teacher of mine from high school passed away this week. In all fairness and honesty, he was not a favorite teacher. We came to loggerheads during the only class of his I took as it was apparent I had taken the class knowing how easy the subject matter was going to be for me and, due to the structure of the class, with students working in teams, my expertise brought up the grades of my team as well. We just never connected. But, and perhaps rose colored glasses are at work here, since his office was the communal office for all members of faculty in that discipline, when I came to see another teacher, I saw him too, and there was always a pleasant greeting - something that literally never happened at college: once you were out of a professor's class you had to go out of your way to find and speak with him again. I found that the camaraderie of the shared office space actually created better relationships among students and teachers; I have several distinct memories of teachers whose classes were not among my favorites but with whom I bantered productively while waiting in the departmental office.

High school, and by extension middle and elementary school, are a far more distant memory than I like to admit and, frankly, than I feel. I saw the students walking this morning and realized that while I may still relate to myself at 16, I clearly have no shared experiences with actual 16-year olds. I have yet to run into a teacher on my commute, but now that the school year has started, I know it's only a matter of time - I think, in reality, though I too am now an adult, my shared experiences with them are more of a hypothetical.

Memories are finicky and I know I have downplayed many of my less sympathetic ones to arrive at a more or less uniformly positive set for my schooling. But I knew when I woke up this morning that it was the first day of school, and I'm pretty sure I'll know that for a good many years to come.


for cf

Ah Desks

I'm not that picky when it comes to furniture, honestly I'm not. I've never given much thought to furniture, so I'm not wedded to a specific style or color. What I would like is something I'm not embarrassed by. I don't want to go to IKEA, and I don't want the 50 dollar desk from Staples. I'd like something that looks, sort of, nice. Sadly, even if I wanted to go to Crate and Barrel/Pottery Barn/Restoration Hardware/West Elm, I'd end up with something that, to my untrained eye, looks like the IKEA desk but is more expensive. So I've embarked, yet again, on a magical mystery tour of craigslist only to discover that lots of people are getting rid of their used IKEA desks for the bargain price of 70% of retail. Because I'm sure the desk you've been using for two years has only lost 30% of its value, considering the high quality of the merchandise in the first place. Perhaps I'm biased, but if you're selling your IKEA furniture and it's in mint condition, you can have the gall to ask for 40% of retail, but everyone else should be satisfied if he can get $5. This is IKEA furniture people. It's like trying to sell your used clothing that you bought at Target for 70% of retail. Anyone in his right mind would simply GO TO TARGET AND BUY IT NEW!!!!!

But craigslist has, true to its nature, turned up a number of puzzling listings, many of which have made me consult a dictionary for the definition of antique, and others making me scratch my head wondering if the person who penned the ad is altogether sane.



Not bad, right? It's not what I'm looking for, but it seems to be a desk. It's being sold for $325. That's right. Someone's old desk from West Elm is being sold for $325. It was a limited edition color, though, that should mean something; similarly the poster assures me it's easy to 'essemble.' I'll try to over look the fact that it is a slab of metal on legs, and a used slab of metal on legs that someone wants $325 for. Is it me?!?



Again, we have something that looks perfectly serviceable. Not my style, but it's someone's, and it looks to be in good condition. $600. Want to know why? Because the poster claims he/she spent $2000 on it when it was new. If this is the case, that person should be committed. $2000 for this? It's just some wood. It's decent looking wood, but wood nonetheless, and I'm pretty positive it doesn't bear the imprimateur of a famous designer. If you paid $600 for it when new, I would be more convinced. That you want me to give you $600 while simultaneously believing you once paid someone else $2000, well, I would like to introduce you to my handmade artisan 8th grade pottery; it can be yours for only $300 and will bring you years of delight!



No no no no no! I'm sorry. This is not a salable item. This is trash. If it isn't, you've done a piss poor job of photographing this item to its best advantage. Right now this looks like something destined for the curb. In hell. That you want $90 for this is a joke. If someone would give you $5 you should take it gladly. That someone will not be me, however.



As if to illustrate my point here comes this. $350. The poster states that when he bought it a "few years ago" he paid $500. So what the poster is telling me is that if I, too, want to spend another $150 I can have a brand new one of these that no one ever spilled diet coke on, a chair no one ever farted into. Or I could give him more than half the purchase price for his. I just bought a car. It had 8 miles on it when I took possession. By the time I had gotten it from Queens to Connecticut, it was already worth about $3000 less than its new value. But your table and chair has only depreciated $150 in the unspecified "few" years you've owned it? I must be missing something because these listings are not aberrations, they're everywhere. Please buy my used crap for nearly new prices. After all, I once paid for it, so you should too, but you won't get the new version, you'll get my old version. This is why when I buy used books from Amazon I only buy ones that are a dollar. You see if the new book costs 15 dollars and someone is selling a used copy for 11, I'D RATHER HAVE THE NEW ONE FOR 4 MORE DOLLARS. This should hold true across the board. New things are better than old things with a few notable exceptions, but those exceptions are generally for valuable things (amphorae and the like - no one wants to pay top dollar for a brand new amphora), not a couch you and your family have sweat on for five years.

Now, to be fair, there are a couple of desks that passed the Yelena test, things made out of non-IKEA wood for the friendly price of $100-$150, and I'll be following up on those, but the rest of the stuff just flummoxes me. I think we, as a society, should all get together and agree that IKEA furniture is disposable. You buy it and that's it, it doesn't get a second owner, it gets a one-way ticket to the dump. Selling cheap furniture, even for sub-$50 prices is embarrassing, because the furniture wasn't worth anything to begin with. I have owned and loved IKEA furniture, but I have never had the balls to try to sell my IKEA furniture to someone else. Because it's from IKEA. Used things should never be sold for more than half of new things because new things frequently go on sale for half the price of themselves. See how this all makes sense? Ok, I see my crazy is emerging and it should be returned to its cage.

Nopropos: I finished reading 2666: A Novel last week and while I can't tell you what it was about because I'm still trying to decide that, I can tell you it was the best book I've read in years. It is a book I think everyone I know should read (and likely people I don't know). Yeah, it's long. But it's broken up into 5 easily digestible pieces, made easier by the fact that it's now in paperback whereas I was toting the hardcover around with me. This book = good. Read this book.

Rewarding Ourselves

[Before I start, I have added a little something so that I don't have to join twitter. I am calling them nopropos so I don't have to write "apropos of nothing." If a posting is tagged with nopropos, it means I added a non sequitur that wasn't deserving of it's own separate post. I would like to have the tags visible at the top of the posting, but so far blogger is being wildly uncooperative vis a vis the amount of format editing I can do without actually digging into the code (which I don't want to do).]

Yes, we still live in the dark, but until you lamp designers out there provide us with something we like, the dark it shall be. Notwithstanding our cave-like existence, in the four weeks since moving in we have accomplished enough that we would not be embarrassed to have you over. We finally assembled the dining room table (having discovered the hardware for it at long last) and, as of yesterday, framed Ed's art, refinished 90% of the lawn furniture - I ran out of paint, - and put down the rug pad in the living room. So Friday, as crazy people do, devoted partner said, "let's drive to Maine," and in a move that I think highlights our suitability for one another, I said, "cool."

So at 8:30pm Friday night, I was asleep, and at 2:30am, I was awake; at 3:00am we were on the road. Nota bene: my engine break-in period is over, I will now be experimenting with revs. Devoted partner had not gone to bed at 8:30pm, though he did do a fair bit of packing, so I took the wheel. He took over at the first Maine rest stop at 6:45am - I made good time without being felonious (misdemeanorish, yes).

Why, one might reasonably ask, did we do this at all. After all, originally we had planned on spending the weekend at the beach. Yeah, but, see, Maine beckoned. It had a lot going for it. We spent four days there in July and had a really really good time. So we thought we might like to use the beautiful Saturday weather promised us on a boat on Sebago Lake. This was worth being kinda sleep deprived and kinda crazy. Furthermore, we got to have breakfast at Chute's.

I know people of the non-slender variety shouldn't spend a lot of time waxing rhapsodic about fattening food, but I can't help it from time to time. Devoted partner took me to Chute's for the first time in 1998. At that time Chute's was in a woman's house. She lived upstairs and served people food downstairs. Regulars had mugs inscribed with their names. There was a single item on the menu that drew us there: the Egg Nate. I will be honest, it is nothing more than an egg mcmuffin, but it's made with real ingredients and they make the english muffin. I only had two Egg Nates on that first trip to Maine, but they made an indelible impression on me - the kind of indelible impression that lasted the 11 years until my subsequent Egg Nate, in July of this year. Original Chute's was gone, burned down intentionally by a very very bad person for no apparent reason. In it's place is slightly less homey Chute's but with all the same Egg Nate. It was our first stop on this impromptu getaway and we were there by 8:00am. I am a Bacon Nate kinda girl, devoted partner inexplicably opts for the Ham Nate. We both enjoy the hot chocolate.

The next stop was the pontoon boat rental. Yes, I suppose people of the non-slender variety should probably not rent boats that accentuate the non-slender human's similarity to the walrus, but I like to think of the pontoon boat less like a boat and more like a floating tanning deck - the motor for me is purely optional. And so, by 9:00am, we were in Brandy Pond heading towards the Songo Locks. If you have never been in a large motor boat and herded into locks before, I highly recommend it. It's really funny and, in my experience, other boats frequently have dogs in them that you can play with while the water changes levels.



Please note dog in the far boat. After this, my memory gets fuzzy. I recall it being a breathtakingly gorgeous day, and I recall napping in the sun. I also recall being blissfully blissfully content. Devoted partner shares similar memories. Sadly, the "tubing" section of the day, while photographed, has been censored by devoted partner - we have differing opinions on the laughter of others. I don't care if you laugh at me or with me, I think it's nice you're laughing. Devoted partner disagrees. Ergo, no photographs of tubing.

But the fun was just beginning. After checking into the very reasonable bed and breakfast I found at approximately 6:30pm Friday, we turned right back around, got some Dairy Bar (ok, I see what you're thinking about the non-slender people and perhaps some of the reasons behind their being non-slender, but it's vacation and if it cheers you up, I am eating grapes and bananas today) where I got an inspired banana ice cream with butterscotch syrup. You might notice there are no pictures of any of the food. There's a good reason for this: I always mean to photograph my food, but then forget and remember about two fork/spoonfuls before the food is gone (please see previous parenthetical remark).

And then it was off to the Bridgton Drive-In.



Maine has drive-ins and they rock! Other people at the drive-in were pros with station wagons and sleeping bags, whereas we had to content ourselves with the dizzying array of seat configurations offered by the nice volks at Volkswagen. It was a triple feature special for Labor Day Weekend, but we only intended to see the first two movies: Inglorious Basterds and District 9. I'd like to say we watched the films, and I'd like you to get your heads out of the collective gutters when you read that. I made it through most of the Basterds before falling asleep prior to finding out what happened in the end, and saw the closing credits of District 9, but what I did see made me happy - especially as I was seeing it from my car while listening to the sound through the radio. Drive-ins are awesome!

Sunday was bizarrely cold and slightly less fun because of it. We tried the beach but it was far more suited for walking than lying down. But while tootling along local roads we found ourselves witness to Lenny, the 1700 pound chocolate moose.



After that, and taking advantage of a brief window of warmth, it was off to Old Orchard Beach, the Coney Island of Maine, but less diverse (unless you consider Quebecois diverse), for a nap on the beach. Old Orchard Beach has a special distinction for me in that it is the only place in the world in which I have ever written my initials in a bathroom stall. And I have done that twice. Because when we were there in July, I discovered, with horror, that the doors in the ladies room were new and that my old signing was therefore lost to history. I resigned. In pink pen.

So the Maine season is probably over for 2009 (since it's about to get really really cold there), but it was a great sendoff for the summer and we got home at an eminently reasonable time on Sunday night leading to a most productive Monday (lawn chairs, framed art, rug pads, not to mention I made strawberry vanilla preserves). I am now actively in the mode whereby I determine how best to extend my tan throughout the winter - New Year's in Bonnaire is looking mighty good!

Nopropos: Now that summer is over, I need to re-learn how to drive in shoes. I have been driving barefoot for so long that I'm having serious difficulty in shoes of any kind (though less difficulty paradoxically in spiky heeled shoes). The cowboy boots I wore today in honor of the unofficial start of fall just weren't cutting it, but winter is hardly the time to drive barefoot. It's just that the shoes create an unbreachable barrier between me and the feel of the pedals. I can feel when the clutch engages barefoot; I can't when wearing shoes. Sigh.

At Least It's A Beautiful Day For A Drive

Alongside our traditional bathroom reading of National Geographic is a book devoted partner got, half in jest, called something like: Great Things About Living in Greenwich; essentially a compendium of things the resident should know about. I have eagerly perused its pages searching for the hidden nuggets that will make me excited about living in a white glove community, and have jotted down a couple of items here and there for more investigation.

Having been given today off, then, I decided to head to a neighboring town, back in New York in fact, whose butcher got high marks from the guide. It is true that Greenwich has a perfectly adequate in-town butcher, but his offerings, while they have been tasty, have also been predictable, and my guide to great Greenwich told me this other butcher was worth a 20 minute drive because he had more exotic fare. I like exotic. I had already conjured up visions of squab and ostrich and wild boar and was composing recipes in my head on the drive over.

The butcher in the neighboring town (and since I have nothing against the butcher, I'm not going to mention it by name or town) had, literally, the exact same meat my Greenwich butcher has: filet mignon, sirloin, ribeye, pork chops, lamp chops, chicken. I asked about duck (not exotic in my mind at all); they can special order me frozen. What about duck fat? Also a special order. I didn't bother asking about boar or squab. I didn't whine like a priss and mention that the great Greenwich guide to good grub told me they'd have a better selection and that I drove here expressly to be wowed, because it's not the butcher's fault. He, like the Greenwich butcher, stocks what people buy. Just because I'm super snot-tacular about food does not obligate these butchers to stock things I, and I alone, will purchase when the mood strikes me.

I had a similar experience on the drive back home. I had passed a farmstand and told myself I would investigate on the return trip. The farmstand certainly looked like a farmstand and some of the produce looked like it may have come from a nearby farm, but most of the product was the same stuff you get in the grocery store: apples from New Zealand, grapes from Chile, figs from California; at prices higher than the supermarket. I know these nice folks are trying to make a living and I also noted that people lined up to buy their wares - I just wondered if I was the only one who noticed that the peaches and nectarines had stickers on them betraying far-off provenance.

And then something struck me which will take a little getting used to: the customers don't care. Not that they're bad or gauche or ignorant, just that this isn't a priority. Making the duck with blackberries recipe from Food & Wine isn't what any of them was planning on doing this weekend. When I remarked to my best friend that I had been surprised that the Whole Foods in Greenwich was actually smaller than those in New York, he didn't bat an eye when he said people out here didn't cook like that and thought that the good local strawberries would be good if only they were big and pretty and uniform like the Driscoll's. Sure, the Whole Foods is always packed, but I've been noticing that what the other shoppers are putting into their baskets are the prepared foods, organic snacks, and occasionally coffees, and not the raw materials with which they would cook their own food. So why would the butchers stock anything that couldn't be immediately thrown on a grill Saturday? Why would the independent grocers spend the time and money to amass local ingredients that wouldn't sell?

The Union Square greenmarket has spoiled me a little, as has seeing my fellow New Yorkers, a group of people who traditionally order Chinese as a way of life, shop for food they will ultimately cook. I'm not saying that none of my new neighbors cooks for her family, I am merely getting the feeling that what that cooking entails might be a little simpler than what I have in mind, and that the market supports that simpler, more traditional cookery.

This has not deterred me, however. I will now convince myself that, with a little leg work, I can buy directly from farms in the greater Fairfield area. I'll find the small farmer with his horde of ostriches, and the 4th generation family of heritage nectarine growers. This bucolic paradise exists if only I'm willing to drive, oh, 150 miles to amass the perfect ingredients for a single meal. Which would be really environmentally conscientious.

Or I could continue to make a once a week trip to Union Square to stock up.

Oh God, We're About To Be Those People

We've had my parents over, we've had his mom and dad over, we've met a friend for pizza, we've over-frequented the local Carvel. What we haven't done yet, what I was hoping to avoid a little while longer, was pull the, "sorry, we've got to go, but we have to drive back to Connecticut" move that we're going to pull tonight when the friends we're having dinner with ask us if we'd like a nightcap, or a coffee, or Shake Shack custard.

It's a school night, after all, and we need to get back to our house. Even though it will probably take about the same amount of time to drive from lower Manhattan home as it used to take by subway to upper Harlem, it FEELS as though it takes longer (nota bene, I realized this morning that even though devoted partner is driving into the city and driving us both back out, he's going to have to drop me at the mall parking lot so I can retrieve my car which I parked this morning before hopping the train - let's hope I remember this at 11pm). And I don't want to be one of those people who is always running back to the burbs (even though, since I now live there, I'm always going to be going back).

The train provides a natural 2am barrier (or thereabouts) and allows one to, sort of, drink. One can either start sobering up so that by the time one exits the train one can drive one's self the 1.7 miles home or one can (maybe, I haven't tested this) take a cab from the station and at some later date retrieve one's car (which one can hope has not been violated in one's absence). And, when I think about it, I'm rarely out so late that 2am is going to cramp my social style, but I don't like the idea that I could be having the time of my life (where? how?) and need to rush to Grand Central like all of devoted partner's friends did in high school (we made fun of you, we snarky city brats, and I know that not all that deep within me, the snarky city brat remains).

Now, it is true. I have another option (or two id I'm pushing it). Mom and dad do live here. They do have a spare bed. I can always (am I saying this) stumble back to their house at four in the morning and hope my entrance doesn't give them twin heart attacks. Theoretically, I could stop by brother's house and hope that it isn't the night he's successfully seduced a Brazilian supermodel (but brother would not be happy to see me at 4am on any occasion).

It's almost as though, by moving to the suburbs, we're practically parents (those parents always leave parties early), but without the hassle of braces. I didn't sign up for that. People looking at me sympathetically, "ah, poor Yelena, she has to get back to her non-urban responsibilities - perhaps there's a lawn that needs mowing or some gutters that need cleaning." It's also equally possible that I'm putting this on myself and that the people I know really could a) care less that I've opted out of post-dinner drinks and/or b) don't spend any time whatsoever thinking about my commute and how it affects my social schedule and/or c) have long considered me a deadbeat who's no fun.

So, to salve my own conscience, I'm going to try to not say, "Sorry, devoted partner and I must be going, we have a long drive home," and say, instead, "great to see you, we're going to head home now." It makes no substantive difference, but emotionally it's a little easier to bear.

The List

I am still typing this from a computer keyboard perched atop my dresser.

In the dark.

All the books have a home but cd spindles, pens, checkbooks, and documents do not.

We eat off tv trays.

In the dark.

And there's a really ratty piece of torn carpet that serves as a runner.

With so much work completed, it's hard to believe what remains. In my notebook I wrote down all the things we would need and how urgent those things were: the runner was a least important, a desk was the most important. Most of the things on those lists have been crossed off, I swear. But I still don't have a garbage can for the kitchen.

And as I've mentioned there's a little bit of a light issue all around. Lamps are definitely our nemeses.

Then there's the little matter of my desk. As those who know me well can attest, I have a little bit of an orange thing i.e. I love orange things. Six months or so ago CB2 had a bright orange desk. When I mention I don't have a desk yet, many well-meaning friends suggest this bright orange desk they remember seeing in the CB2 catalog. They don't have it any more. Now the options are chartreuse and black. And it's not so much a desk as it is a piece of metal on casters. Which may have been easy to overlook had the metal been orange, but without that sweetener, it's a $150 metal piece on wheels. The trouble is, I haven't seen a desk at any price that I like. It is true, I want a cheap desk, but at this point, the right desk would be worth some money. Considering, as I mentioned before, that my current desk is a dresser. I sit sideways on my chair because there's no room for my legs - there are drawers there. It is true, when we were at United Housewreckers, I gave some thought to the old-timey desk; something with a roll-top or a banker's feel, but those things are heavy and I have a feeling I would get tired of one sooner rather than later. On the other hand, the monstrosities that pass for modern efficiency desks are little more than tinker toys writ large. I'm considering saving the money on a desk and buying a laptop instead that I can rest on one of the tv trays (though I still have one monster of a printer that would need a home - it's one of the other things that hasn't been unpacked because there's nowhere for it to live). Also, while a laptop would solve the surface area problem of desks, it wouldn't solve the drawer problem: the drawers I intend to use for cd spindles, checkbooks, and pens.

I've tried to downplay the desk problem because it is so far less interesting than the prep kitchen table problem. After all, I can currently use my computer, and if I wanted to, I could simply unpack the pens and cd spindles into one of the dresser drawers; whereas I have no room anywhere to make ravioli or puff pastry. Still, as the days turn into weeks and the cooling weather reminds me of the passage of time, prosaically, I realize this desk thing too is a problem that needs attention. So if you see something that doesn't suck and doesn't cost more than a laptop, please send it my way. My thighs are cramping!


Apropos of nothing, I'm preserving for posterity examples of people on Metro North attempting to hog seats. This one was a special favorite though, in gross foot man's defense, when two legitimately elderly frail looking people got on the train he did let them have his seat - that smelled of feet. I wish I had a picture of the seat I took yesterday afternoon - I had it picked out as the train was still rolling into the station: a woman in a three-across seat sitting in the middle seat with her shit on either side of her. She was not pleased I thought to take one of the THREE seats she had selected for herself. Remember, fellow commuters, I am on the lookout for the most selfish among you to be my seatmate. Prepare to be maliciously inconvenienced and, I hope, chagrined by your own truly laudable spatial parsimony!

This Crap Weather

I only wait for summer all year. Not just because of the weather, the tan, the excuse for frozen drinks, but because, for a few short months, my kitchen comes alive with bounty. Many delightful things are created and enjoyed, and the long long long winter months of cabbage and turnip seem but a distant memory. This summer had some problems not associated with the weather:

The fruit fly consortium in my old apartment kitchen did sort of turn me off cooking for a while - or getting anywhere near the kitchen or bathroom; one was avoidable, the other, sadly, less avoidable.

Perhaps you'd heard, but we moved. In between tossing everything out from the old kitchen and barely stocking the new, and not having the same kind of space, and not having a prep table, well, cooking elaborate things was not really going to happen.

But now it's September 1, and by my count I have at least 3 good weeks left of peaches, tomatoes, raspberries, peppers, corn, blueberries, plums, beans, well pretty much everything. And you know what? It all sucks.

Perhaps that's being a little too harsh, it doesn't suck, it's just not great. My longed for apricots from Red Jacket Orchards? I'm not even sure they're good enough to make preserves. The peaches? Had to be sugared on the peach cheesecake I made for my new neighbors. The cherries? Forget it, they tasted like, well, a month of rain. The tomatoes? Mealy. It is sort of breaking my heart because I know that it's about to be all apples and potatoes all the time before I know it, and I won't even have pleasant memories to guide me through the winter.

And while I could blame this predicament on my attempts to be local and seasonal, it's not as though those Driscoll berries taste like anything no matter what time of year it is. I just wanted a couple of good tarts, something visually appealing that I could enjoy while sitting in my backyard with a cold glass of something. I want to make and jar tomato sauce for the winter, but if the tomatoes don't taste like much now, I hardly think three months in a jar will improve them.

So, while today is beautiful, I think it's too late for this season of food (which makes me a little glad, actually, that we missed making reservations at Blue Hill at Stone Barns for, I don't know, the 4th year in a row, because as much as I think he's the cat's meow, I don't think even Dan Barber could turn this crap harvest around). I'm trying to look ahead to roasted chickens and apple pies.