Miscellany

I'm beginning to see signs of life from the blogs on my link list! Hurray! It's always inspiring to write when you're not the only one updating.

Since I've been gone for a short time and several interesting (to me) events have taken place, I'm going to cop out and do the list:

*My mother came to visit. This time, we ate all kinds of yummy food, bought some really lovely yarn for a project of hers, and went to see the New York Ballet perform their Balanchinian "Jewels" program. It wasn't as amazing as I found the American Ballet Theatre's Sleeping Beauty, but I *am* beginning to be very grateful for that Stravinsky seminar I took during my last semester of school. It taught me so much useful info about ballet!

*The opera run I was complaining about earlier is finally done! I'm so very glad that I don't need to schlep to Brooklyn every weekend to play a three hour show anymore.

*I've finally followed some good advice and have signed up for a three-month membership to a yoga studio. It fits into my fitness routine perfectly, because it allows me to work on flexibility and balance, and it kicks my ass all at the same time! Additionally, my new awesome yoga pants are helping me out so much that I wish I could wear them everywhere on a daily basis.

*Our apartment has miraculously become more livable, thanks to our new futon! Watching TV while being stretched out is seriously a magnificent thing.

*The hunt for the perfect dress to wear at a wedding has begun! I'm not having any luck so far, but I'm hoping that tomorrow's trip to the mall will solve the issue once and for all. I have a handy check list of what-I-want-in-a-dress, so I'm hoping for good luck from the shopping gods tomorrow.

*I will be flying to Buffalo NY on Sunday, to visit relatives there. I'm actually a little bit worried about keeping up with the work out routine, which I'm taking as a good sign.

Aaaaand... that's about it! Hope you're all well!

Visitors!

You'll have to pardon the vacancy of my blog for a short while. I am entertaining visitors until Monday, one of which happens to be my mother, which I am very excited about! We have lots of excitement planned.

A Check Off the List

I may have mentioned that delicious all vegetarian won-ton soup that I greedily ate in Philadelphia during my only "vacation" (so far) from NYC. I remember it fondly... I consumed it (and ordered seconds!) at the Kingdom of Vegetarians with my mother a few months ago.

Alas, it was all I could do to keep the visions of yummy vegetarian soup, complete with imitation pork, from driving me crazy for the lack of an alternative here in NYC.

But then it hit me....

Zen Palate is like 6 blocks away from work...
Zen Palate is a vegetarian restaurant...
Zen Palate features again-inspired cuisine...
ZEN PALATE MIGHT HAVE VEGETARIAN WON-TON SOUP!!!!

When lunchtime finally rolled around, you better believe I was on my way down to ZP to find out if this were true.

Much to my giddiness, the rumors are true! Veggie won-ton soup has returned to my life, and to think, it was only 6.5 blocks away all this time!

Oh, Vegetarian Won-Ton Soup. Words cannot describe how much I love you.

The Hunt for the Perfect Veggie Burger

I'm one step closer to locating NYC's best veggie burger.

J. came to visit me for lunch, so we hoofed it down to Curly's Vegetarian Lunch for a bite to eat. I located this diner by Googling "best veggie burger in NYC." In true investigative form, I ventured to the other side of NYU to find out if this claim was indeed true.

Here I am, outside the restaurant! J. made extra sure to get my boobs in this shot.




Crayons and blank paper place mats were on the table when we sat down, so we made good use of them while we pondered our many, many vegetarian choices!!


Curly's serves breakfast all day, but I was determined to check out the so-call best veggie burger in NYC.

This is it! In interest of my progress at the gym, I opted for the house salad instead of the fries. On the left is a sizable veggie burger, with lots of cheese. So far, so good. Although I will need to add a few minutes of cardio to work off all that cheese!

J. ordered the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich. I am under the impression that it too should come with a salad or fries, but a careful read of the menu will tell you what to expect.


J. is enjoying his food! That's a good sign. In the interest of this review, I peeked inside of his BBQ Chicken. It's basically soy chicked strips with a barbeque sauce and lots of yummy veggies on top. In trying to get a read on J.'s thoughts on the food, I asked if he'd come again. He said, "sure." Enthusiasm noted.

My veggie burger, meanwhile, arrived with no toppings at all, so I pilfered a few tomatos and some lettuce from my salad. The accommodating server brought me a large quantity of onions, too, which is necessary for a perfect veggie burger.

I topped my burger with their ketchup instead of my usual choice of vegan mayo, which worked out great until I tried the salad dressing -- a slightly spicy, viscous tomato dressing. It was amazing! Next time, I will use the dressing instead of ketchup.

Overall, I would give this veggie burger a rating of 7.7 out of 10. There was lots of yummy cheese, which was tasty but obscured the burger a little bit. In a perfect world, one would catch the flavor of the veggie burger as well as the cheese. Also, the lack of toppings was a large concern, as I am of the mind that vegetarians do like the same ensemble of burgerness as do carnivores, so why not pile on the toppings? Luckily, the waitstaff was very nice and gave me as many onions as a girl could want.

I'll definitely consider Curly's again for my veggie burger needs. But, I'm still searching... The quest continues.

Book Review: The Namesake

I'm importing this review, Facebook style, from goodreads.com. If you love to read, and want to throw your two cents in about anything you've read, you should join and be my friend!

***

I must make two confessions before I delve into a proper review of this book:

1. I saw the movie adaptation of this novel before I read the book.
2. I have read, and loved, Interpreter of Maladies.

As much as I tried to put these two substantial forces out of my mind, they were inevitably the lens through which I understood The Namesake. While I unfortunately began this book knowing the plot, I also knew that Lahiri's prose is among the best I've ever read. Her short stories are nearly flawless, and each individual piece offers a profound view of the complex world of her characters.

The narration of the novel is true to Lahini's form-- effortless, smooth, subtle and richly detailed. The plot, however, feels stretched thin; nothing extraordinary occurs in Gogol's life, outside of the death of his father. In fact, this novel was quite a departure from Lahiri's earlier work in Interpreter of Maladies in that Gogol is so unconflicted, so thoroughly American as to seek to overcome his parent's attempts to instill in him the values they've retained from their way of life in India. Instead, he immerses himself in the country of his birth, adopting himself into the most American way of life that Lahiri can imagine for him.

The Ratliffs represent, in my opinion, an example of the execesses that most likely represent the American way of life to outsiders. This is a life full of dinner parties, lots of wine, summer-long vacations from work, shopping, etc, and is meant to provide a contrast to Gogol's modest upbringing. Only the unsettling death of his father can bring Gogol to realize that he will never find a true home here.

Even more unsettling was Gogol's relationship with Moushumi. Despite that she comes from a similar foundation as Gogol himself, this character lived in profusion of wealth and personal riches, including a fancy apartment (for a student? with immigrant parents?) beautiful clothing and trips to Paris. Despite their parent's initial glee upon their marriage, Moushumi's inability to maintain a marriage with a man of similar decent becomes their undoing. After all of this, I only ask, what is the point? What is to be learned from this?

Those two questions were inevitably all that remained for me at the conclusion of the novel. We are, at the novel's close, to believe that Gogol has returned home by reading his long-forgotten short stories of Nikolai Gogol. Somehow, all of Nikhil's cavorting is to be forgiven upon his acceptance of his "real" name. True introspection regarding Gogol's origins had been cast aside by Gogol himself, and so the conclusion of the book seems hasty.

While Lahiri's prose was excellent thoughout, and her musings on what's-in-a-name (something that I, as a Davis, will never tire of) were interesting, I found this novel, overall, to be only mildly worthy of short story material, but not at all worthy of a 200+ page novel.

Tumbleweeds

Creating time to post is directly related to the amount of "me time" I have in my life at any given time. It's been nearly three weeks (!!!) since I've even hovered my mouse over the blogger icon on my bookmarks toolbar.

The most obvious reason for my absence is that school's out for summertime. That means J. is almost always here when I return from work or the gym or my evening rehearsals. And that means, dinnertime! and also our mad plight to catch up with Smallville. I'm not sure why we're in such a hurry, given that it sucks to have to wait each week for your favorite program, with no respite from any crappy episodes that cross your path.

When I haven't been couching around after hours, I have been playing in various groups of which I am slowly becoming a regular. I've learned two whole things about horn playing in the time since I've last posted:

1. DH was right about avoiding setting the horns in front of the timpani at all costs! My personal performance of Bruckner 4 was ruined by a sensation similar to that of the timpanist actually beating on my chops with his deceptively fuzzy mallets.
2. Cosi fan Tutte is hard!! That solo in the adagio aria is killer, what with all those cross fingerings. I think this may be one of the few passages that was actually EASIER for hand horn!

And when I haven't been doing all of that playing stuff, I've been distracting myself from financial worries. J. is officially done with MSM, and is now looking for the PERFECT job, which is, to be certain, an arduous and painstaking process. I'm nervous about paying New York City-sized bills on my extremely small income, plus moneys from gigs here and there.

I very much wanted to move closer to the fun, but my dreams of Brooklyn- or Astoria-living were dashed by the whole unemployment thing. Not to mention, I found out just an hour or so ago that, even though our living room windows face a brick wall at an arm's length and our kitchen is literally breaking into pieces, our rent is going up for the next lease.

But I didn't visit this forgotten blog to complain-- though I guess it's an obvious byproduct of avoiding stressing out about it all to the one person whose opinion matters in this whole charade.

On a happy note, I am growing more and more excited about my impending travels, which are a mere month away! I'm also excited to have reconnected with a great friend, and to continue to develop the friendships that I've managed to finagle out of my time so far in the big city.

And, might I add, I'm extremely happy to be practicing yoga again. I went to my first class here a week ago, and loved it! I'm definitely back in the game, which will certainly help soothe my weary nerves.