Tenement Museum

I've been given a few of my own accounts at work, something I have mixed feelings about, but one of them is the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. I'd never been there before and the opportunity came up for me to attend this young professionals cocktail reception and tour tonight with a friend from work. So tonight E and I went down there and I just have to say it's so remarkable. I love history, so it makes sense that I would love a history museum, but I never expected to enjoy it so much.

They've restored this old tenement building to be like the apartments of actual people that lived there in different points in history. The building was built in 1863 and 7,000 lived there over its lifetime. We toured an apartment from a Prussian Jewish family with a really amazing, tragic story. I think half of us were crying when he finished talking, it was so sad. Then we toured a Sicilian family's apartment that had come to the States within a few years of my grandfather's family, so I felt a connection to that.

It was just so interesting. I highly recommend it. I want to go back and go on the other tours they offer.

Perfect NYC Day

AF is still here visiting with me so we spent the entire day around the city. Except for the sunlight being so bright that I could barely keep my infected eyes with the swollen corneas open, it was a pretty-perfect day.

We went to the MOMA where we saw Tangled Alphabets which I thought was a great exhibit. Totally not what I normally like, but if I ever have money these are the type of things that I want in my mansion. Then I finally got to see Into the Sunset and honestly, I really didn't like it. It was curated by theme, not chronologically and it just didn't make sense and it was difficult to follow. I was not impressed.

Then we went down to Soho and ate at a fantastic Cuban restaurant that I love and then did some shopping. Eventually we met up with AF's high school roommate who briefly went to MHC with us, and that was nice. This girl is a little nutty, she's ADHD, but she's a good person. I guess she's kind of lonely in the city so she kept saying we should hang out. I like her and all and it would be nice to have someone to do crazy stuff with, but I'm not sure how long I could handle her. Evil as that sounds.

Tonight we had dinner at Rose Water, the place I went in April for restaurant week with LM. It was amazing again, their food is beyond. I had the spring onion soup as an appetizer and it was brilliant. Plus I even found a Chardonnay that I liked.

Monday, Monday

Today I joined Weight Watchers. I've always been against diets and Weight Watchers because I don't feel like you can sustain them and it annoys me that crap like those 100 calorie snack things (don't get me started on those) can be fewer points than fruit or whatever. But after speaking to someone at work who's been doing it for a month or two I realized that I can make it work for me. If I don't want to eat that processed crap then I won't eat the processed crap, it's more of a way of practicing portion control and holding myself accountable. And so far I really like it. It fits well with my obsessive planning personality. So my first goal is to lose 9.6lbs and I will keep you updated (but not in an annoying, dramatic, emotional dear diary way).

Some things I keep meaning to mention...

We're doing a book on Vans, the sneaker company, so as a promotional thing for Book Expo a select group of people got to design their own custom Vans and order them free of charge. My attempt at being creative:



I don't really think I'm a stars person, but I really liked these. We'll see how they look in person in 5-7 weeks.

Not that I really paid close attention to Madeline Albright's pins while she was Secretary of State, but this exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design sounds really interesting. I've never been to MAD, but it's definitely been on my list of places I want to go.

And this exhibit at the New Museum (another place I need to visit) sounds interesting as well. Maybe I can bring AF when she's here in May.

Another Museum

I will, in the near future, do a post about my job. It's a job, it makes me a very modest amount of money and most of the time I enjoy it, a lot of the time I'm bored, and a small amount of the time I hate it and start planning my out. But, in the end, I get to do some cool stuff. Like today, I got to go with my boss to the International Center of Photography on a sales call. 

 

Witnessing the sales calls was as to be expected (not too thrilling), but the really exciting part came after the sales call was over. They are currently in the beginning of a series of exhibits called A Year in Fashion. Normally the museum is closed on Monday, but since we were there and it's about the most relaxed place in the world we got a private view of the exhibits. We saw Edward Steichen's Conde Nast years, which are gorgeous pictures, if a little repetitive. Then we went to look at the This is Not a Fashion Photograph exhibit, which was my favorite. It showed how contemporary photographers from WeeGee to Gordon Parks to Walker Evans to Cindy Sherman and their decidedly not fashion photography photographs had an impact on fashion photography. I would definitely recommend going to see it before it closes.

Something I would not recommend is the movie Sunshine Cleaning. It was cute enough and Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, and Alan Arkin are all great, but it just fell flat. The story isn't developed enough and it's one of those movies where all the funny parts are in the preview. Definitely a DVD movie.