The NYT Sunday Puzzle Celebrates Super Bowl Sunday

Finished another one! Makes two Sundays in a row! Yippee!

Rex Parker rated this puzzle medium but medium-challenging for those he describes as “football-illiterate.”

I don’t like football. I find it utterly boring. Plus, some of what takes place on the field seems very stupid to me. For example, once a player is tackled and is down, why do all the others insist on piling on? Perhaps, the answer lies in the psychological view posited in an article I read many years ago (I wish I could find it). The author suggested that many of the behaviors on the football field, such as the piling on and players patting each other on the tush, was a way for these he-men to get away with being touchy-feely without being labeled sissies or gay. Of course, we now know that some of them actually were/are gay. But I digress…

Figuring out that the theme of this puzzle was football terms was easy. And even though football is not my thing, I’m not a total dunce about it. Many years ago, when I was still dating, a guy I was seeing asked me to go to a Jets game at Shea Stadium. I think at that time, Joe Namath was quarterbacking. Since I had no interest whatsoever in football, (baseball was my passion back then, and I remain a Yankee fan though I’m not as into the game as I was then), I haven’t a clue why I agreed to go.

I understand the fundamentals of the game, so by filling in enough boxes, I was able to come up with all the terms. However, there was one I’d not heard of before. A “screen” pass? I’ve since looked it up.

Freedom: The Plow Man Cometh!

I have shoveled more snow in my lifetime than I care to remember. Quite a few years ago, I finally gave it up, and I have no intention of ever taking shovel to snow again! M soldiered on, using a shovel for small amounts and tackling substantial snowfalls with our snow blower, which we inherited many years ago from his parents when they moved to Florida. Two years ago, he finally gave up contending with those higher amounts, and that quite ancient snow blower sits idle in our garage.

Now, the guy who mows our lawn in the summer plows us out whenever there is more than a couple of inches. The only negative aspect is that when it comes to major snowstorms such as the one we just had, we are at his mercy since we have to wait for him to clear our driveway so that we can get out of the house. Although the snow ended yesterday in the early afternoon, he didn’t get to us until this morning. Needless to say, we were very pleased to see him!

Freedom is a snow-free driveway. Being on the sunny side of the street helps to melt any snow left after the plowing. Loverly!

Here We Snow Again!

Actually, we lucked out in January and managed to avoid any acculmulation from two coastal storms. Got just a dusting during the first and maybe a quarter of an inch from the second. This time, no such luck!

The track of this storm took it straight over much of NJ. South of us, Ocean County and down to Cape May got the brunt — more than a foot with blizzard conditions near and along the coast. The tippy top of the state in Sussex County — virtually nothing.

Here in Central NJ, it stopped snowing a few minutes ago. It looks as though we got about 9-12 inches. Hard to tell exactly without going out and measuring. But no way I’m doing that! In any case, this has a familiar look though in December we got about a foot-and-a-half.

We had been thinking of going to the ballet in the city this weekend but held off buying tickets because of the forecast. J called and said there isn’t so much as a flake in Manhattan. The township plow has been by a couple of times, but the road is snow covered again. Once they clear it and if our plow guy shows up to clear our driveway, we might see about getting tickets for tomorrow’s matinée of the NYC Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty, a ballet we haven’t seen in ages. J saw it last night and said it was terrific.

Cocktails for Two: A Short Verse

Leo and Eamon at EMP
Created two cocktails for M and me.

To start M’s birthday celebration
We were gifted these lovely surprise libations.

Some ingredients in both were the same.
But M’s contained sherry while mine remained tame.

Jordan put on final touches with flames,
Then revealed to us their special names:

R. Birthday Cocktails
Number 11 and Number 11.1
(Note: The R stands for our surname.)

Number 11 for M

Number 11.1 for Me

Before we left, they gave us souvenir cards printed with the recipes. For any cocktail aficionados out there, I have provided the recipes beneath the fold.

Our sincere thanks to Leo, Eamon, Jordan, and the entire EMP staff for this creative and thoughtful gift!

The rest of this birthday celebration story in an upcoming post.

NYT Sunday Crossword Puzzle: First One Completed in 2010

I quickly figured out the “trick” — adding the letter “i” to the end of one of the words in the answer thus making a familiar phrase kind of wacky. I finished in two sittings.

I knew that everything I had filled in was correct, but I was totally mystified by 66 Down. The clue: “bit of gossip.” The answer: “ondit.” Not a word familiar to me. I checked my Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Not in there. So I Googled and discovered a very interesting website. Rex Parker does the NYT crossword puzzle every day, posts the answers, and discusses various aspects of each puzzle.

As it happens, for today’s puzzle, his word of the day is — ondit. Nice that even he considers it enough of a puzzlement to highlight it. Turns out, its origin is French. Boy, am I feeling très stupide! How could I have not recognized “on dit,” meaning “one speaks.” After all, I can read, write, and speak French. When I then showed M the word, he immediately recognized the French. Made me feel even dumber! But he soothed my somewhat battered ego by commenting that while he might have outdone me in the case of this one word, he could never finish this or any other Sunday puzzle. True enough. Anyhoosle, the meaning of ondit is “a rumor.”

There was another answer Rex helped me out with. The clue for 72 Down is “Lancelot portrayer, 1967.” The answer: “Nero.” Who? The only Nero I could think of was the one who let Rome go up in smoke. In this case, it’s Franco Nero. In the movie version of Camelot, he played the role originated on Broadway by Robert Goulet. I’ve never seen the movie, which is probably why I blanked on Franco.

Rex rates the difficulty level of each puzzle. Today’s: Medium. Actually, I found it relatively easy.

Happy Birthday, M!

M has been dying to see Avatar. I, on the other hand, was not sure I wanted to see it. But the boy does get to call the shots on his day, so off we went this morning to see it in IMAX 3-D. Well, all I can say is WOW! Talk about special effects! And a very interesting story to boot! For two-and-a-half-hours, it was, as M commented, like being transported to another planet. I did think it could have been just a tad shorter, but that’s a minor quibble. If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend it. In IMAX, if possible, but definitely in 3-D.

Afterwards, we went to the Turkish Kitchen for lunch. We hadn’t been there in ages. Food’s still excellent. Photos will be up on my Flickr within the next day or so.

You don’t really need me to tell you where tonight’s celebration dinner will take place, do you?

Happy Birthday, M!

TWofR Meets Family of One

Friendships can start in the darnedest ways. This one began with a t-shirt. Actually two t-shirts. In September, M was in Hong Kong with u.e. feasting on Chinese food, so I took J to EMP for lunch. As we were finishing our meal (photos here), one of the dining room managers, Robert Kihlstrom, strode towards our table carrying an EMP bag. What was this all about? While I’ve occasional taken home leftovers, this time, I’d devoured every delicious morsel, so it couldn’t hold a doggie box. A take-home treat from the kitchen, perhaps? No, he said with a twinkle in his eye and a Cheshire-cat-like smile, then went on to explain. In honor of the restaurant’s being awarded its fourth star by the NY Times a few weeks prior, a woman who is, as we are, a foodie and a huge EMP fan, had made up a batch of specially inscribed t-shirts for the staff. According to Robert, she told him that if there were any remaining, he should give them to any patrons who loved EMP as much as she did.* And, he continued, he couldn’t think of two more enthusiastically vocal supporters than M and me. Well, I certainly couldn’t argue with that! He then pulled out one of the shirts on the front was emblazoned the words you see in the photo.

Thanking Robert for the thoughtful gesture, I asked him for the woman’s e-mail address so I could thank her as well. Back in our apartment, I promptly wrote a short note and sent it off, hoping it would not land in her spam box. A few days later, I received a reply. (Sigh of relief!) What followed was a flurry of back and forth e-mails. Things clicked between us, and the bud of a friendship took root.

When I learned that she has a blog, where her nom de plume is Family of One, I immediately checked it out. What a delight! A gifted writer, she relates the stories of her life, including her dining adventures, wittily and with engaging details. I urge you to go there and be entertained.

We hatched plans to meet. She lives in Miami but comes to NYC several times a year. Her next visit would be just before Christmas. We decided that we would meet for lunch. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you where! She told me that while she’d had many dinners at EMP, she had never had lunch there and was eager to experience it during the daytime, especially when I described how magical it was to sit in that gorgeous space with the light streaming in through the enormous windows. This would also allow Family of One to continue her tradition of having her pre-Christmas dinner at EMP solo.

The weekend she would be arriving, I had a packed schedule: our traditional Chanukah dinner in our apartment on Friday evening, a family get-together at a restaurant on Saturday evening, and theater tickets for M and me on Sunday. Lunch with Family of One would be Monday. But as the time for her visit drew closer, and we grew more and more excited, we agreed there was no way we could be in the same city and, in fact, be so near each other since her hotel was only blocks from our apartment, and wait until Monday to see each other. So, we decided to meet for drinks on Sunday evening in the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel – conveniently located a few short blocks from our apartment, and where she had reservations for dinner that evening at Maialino.

Then, for some added drama, along came the big snowstorm of December ’09. I hadn’t checked the weather on Friday, so I found out about it that afternoon when my brother called about our Saturday plans. Snowstorm? What snowstorm? When we left NJ on Thursday, none of the weather reports on “NJ Traffic & Weather Together” or on the Weather Channel had mentioned a major storm coming our way. The snow would be arriving on Saturday, so we cancelled dinner with the family because my brother and other relatives were coming in from L.I., and it was looking as though they could be getting 16 to 20 inches! But our area in NJ was not going to be any better off. A call to the guys who plow our driveway assured us that it would be taken care of so that we would be able to get into our house when we returned on Monday night.. (They were true to their word, which was a good thing because there was a foot-and-a-half of the white stuff.)

When we finally met in person, it was almost more like a reunion than a first time. The three of us spent a lovely hour together before she went into Maialino for dinner, and we went back to our apartment. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough for me!

Internet Connection Woes

No, I haven’t fallen down the rabbit hole!

The trouble began last Wednesday in the middle of the night. An outage brought to us compliments of that paragon of internet providers, AT&T (/snark). No 24/7 customer assistance from AT&T, boys and girls, so we had to wait until 8 a.m. to try to find out exactly what was happening. When M got one of those lovely folks in India on the line, a check of our connection determined that the problem did not reside with us. They weren’t sure, but it appeared to be an extensive outage. Area-wide, as it turned out. Why did it not surprise us that AT&T had not informed their reps up front about the outage? Furthermore, any attempt to get additional information about what was happening proved fruitless. One would think the customer service personnel would have a special number they could use to contact the home office in the U.S. But, no-o-o-o! They have the same 800 number we have, and they had no better luck getting through than we did.

What really riled us about what turned out to be a very long outage was not the fact that it happened – systems do go down, as was the case recently with Blackberry — but that AT&T never saw fit to put on a recording to inform and update customers about what was happening. What one got when dialing the 800 number was a recording thanking us for our patronage and patience and telling us to hold on for the next available representative. Then music, then back to the recording, etc., etc. No use hanging on as it was like waiting for Godot!

Seventeen hours later, we were finally back on line. However, the connection was iffy. We would be connected for a while and then lose the connection. Not that this was something new for us. AT&T has never been a particularly reliable provider, and since we lose our connection with some regularity, M has become a master at reconnecting us without having to call AT&T for help. Also, when it comes to speed, AT&T’s DSL is very slow. Not as slow as dial-up was, but slow.

I’ll digress for a moment to answer the question you may be asking: Why are we still using AT&T? We have talked about switching to a different provider. However, FIOS is not available in our area, and the other provider is Cablevision. And if there is a company that I dislike more than AT&T, it’s Cablevision. Actually, I despise Cablevision! But that’s a rant for another post.

Since the connection was so unstable, M checked with AT&T again to see if they were still having problems. The rep checked things out and determined that AT&T was not at fault.

M and I each have our own computer in separate rooms connected by WiFi. The modem and router are connected to his computer, while the receiver is connected to mine. If the problem didn’t reside with AT&T, M now figured it must be related to the WiFi, especially since he was having less difficulty reconnecting than I was. On Friday, he called Linksys. They determined that we had a malfunctioning router. Since it was still under warranty, the replacement would be free-of-charge as long as we sent back the old one once the new one arrived.

Linksys is in California. It would take three business days to receive the router. Unfortunately for us, a weekend and the MLK, Jr., holiday intervened. Thus, it took almost a week for it to arrive.

In the interim, the router totally died, and M had to connect his computer directly to the modem in order to get on line. Since my computer had become useless isofar as getting on line was concerned, I did use his computer to check my favorite sites; however, it’s inconvenient for posting here, especially when including photographs.

UPS delivered the router this afternoon. With the help of a Linksys tech, M installed it and got us back on line — with a solid connection. Yippee!

TWofR Is Officially One Year Old

Does one wish one’s blog Happy Birthday? Or should it be Happy Anniversary? In any case, my very first post went up on January 10, 2009. A quite gingerly dipping of my toe into the blogging waters, actually. Just a photo of our backyard. One year later to the day, and what do you know? The woods look exactly the same, that is, covered with a thin blanket of snow. Have I mentioned that I hate winter?

What’s ahead? I’ll be doing some retrospectives related to the dining out we did in ’09. We’ve already got some restaurant experiences under our belt for this year which I’ll post about. And I have a little at-home culinary project in mind. I’ll also be catching up on the plays we’ve seen so far this season at the Roundabout and a ballet we attended.

So, stay tuned!

TWofR and a New Year

I started this blog one year ago. During this first year, I put up 53 posts – an average of one a week. As my signature line says, I did “talk of many things,” with words and/or through pictures. Not too bad a beginning.

Now that I’ve got this baby rolling, one of my goals (I prefer that term to “resolutions”) for the coming year is to post more frequently so that those of you who have passed this way will, I hope, be entertained enough to keep coming back.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have visited. A special THANK YOU! to my dear friend, the ulterior epicure. Without him, TWofR would never have gotten off the ground, and his continuing guidance is invaluable. A substantial percentage of traffic here is the direct result from his shout-out and link on his very popular blog, for which I am truly grateful.

My very best wishes to all of you for a happy and healthy 2010!