Darling, I love you so

three years ago to the day i met rogray for the first time. we were at karaoke hanging out with our mutual friend the critic. (whaddup critic!)



the story as i like to tell it is that he fell in love with me instantly and i thought he was funny but weird because he was wearing a suit. yes, i am that lame.

rogray has a different version but this isn't his blog so he doesn't get to tell it here unless he wants to kick it in the comments.



exactly three months later, to the day, (october 26) rogray and i locked lips for the first time and that was it. i dipped my single lady shoes in bronze, put them on the mantle and said "i'm with this guy."



one month before i met rogray -- to the day -- i turned 26 on july 26th which means it was my golden birthday. the blurb on wikipedia defines it thusly: One's golden birthday, also called a champagne birthday, is the day when the age someone turns is the same as the day in the month he or she was born. (for example, someone turning 26 on December 26 celebrates his or her golden birthday).

(as you can see the number 26 figures very important in our lives: my birthday, the age we met each other, the night we first met, and the night we count as our anniversary. even wikipedia uses 26 in the description of a golden birthday. what the hell?)



so basically this was supposed to be a very special, life changing and important year in my life. and i would have to say that it was.

to say that meeting rogray changed my life would be an understatement. (not that i am prone to exaggeration.) i've tried writing words to describe how much this man means to me -- how he has changed my life in every way for the better and how happy he makes me by simply walking through the door at the end of the day but it seems to be hard to put into words.



it is also hard to put int words the relief i felt when i found out that the reason he was wearing a suit the first night we met was because he had just come from his grandfather's 80th birthday dinner.

in a pretty magazine

what magazine does rogray gift himself?

awwwww, yeah. . .



that's right. . .my man likes himself some real simple. . .not for the articles silly.

for the recipe porn in the back.

I love my computer

rogray got a new computer!! and i want one!

it's a macbook with that photobooth camera. . .so i think you can guess what happened when i got my hands on it for 5 minutes:











i have a feeling that this is not the last photo-both post. . .

so, readers. . .which is your favorite?

Take this sinking boat and point it home

rogray and i saw Once yesterday. you may have seen the preview for it and you may have thought to yourself "that looks interesting" or you may have started crying inexplicably like i did. every time. i hadn't even seen the movie and i was crying during the preview.

very rarely does a movie live up to a preview since the preview is the best moments stitched together to whet your appetite and get you to buy the ticket. this movie lives up to and surpasses the build-up of the preview.

the dude says it better than i can: Once is far from typical, though. Like with music, it's the singer, not the song, that makes us connect with it. Writer/Director John Carney and his actors do everything they can to make this as far from typical and run of the mill as possible. Yes, the story may be simple, but there are no story contrivances, only the reality of the situations. What happens between Guy and Girl I will not divulge, for that is a journey you have to make yourself. Because you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

go see this movie. if you aren't crying like a baby as the credits begin to roll than you have no soul and have never loved. you are a shell of a human being so good luck to you.

so listen to the dude or listen to me but go see the movie and if you don't like it then i'm sorry -- but i bet you that not only will you love it -- you'll go buy the soundtrack because you'll want to listen to all the songs again and again...

A-camping we will go

before rogray left for sundance he arranged for us to go on a special surprise weekend to celebrate my birthday early (he was missing it? have i said that already? oh, i've said it 20 times?) and have a weekend together before we weren't going to see each other for 3 weeks.

the surprise? camping!!!

he reserved us a site at taconic state park, specifically the copake falls area. when we arrived at our reserved site not only had a 3 family group unpacked on it and left a note asking if it was okay for us to take their site we realized that either site was smack dab in the middle of a seventh day adventist church group and the aforementioned 3 family site stealer. rogray was confused because they guy on the phone when he made the reservation was like "yeah, that's a secluded site" but actually is what the opposite of secluded and in fact so surrounded by people of all ages that a realtor would describe it as "centrally located" or "smack dab in the middle of the heartbeat of the city." which is not want you want on your surprise romantic camping trip.

so after a drive around the other sites and a few trips to the office we were able to get a site that was actually secluded and not surrounded by screaming children, hymnal singers or in close proximity to what seemed to be a group camping trip that was either a family reunion or a political rally -- i don't know because they were speaking in spanish and yelling things and i think at one point someone had a drum. we were at the top of a hill and the only people next to us were the 2 british girls who drank a lot. perfect!



now when i say camping what i really mean is glamour camping or glamping. see we may be in a tent and we may have to cook on a fire pit but that does not mean we need to sacrifice style.



god, i'm classy.

so after we took a walk and a bracing swim in the swimming hole we started to drink and cook:





while we waited for the feast to cook we started a very intense game of scrabble:



do not cross me. . .

we took a break to eat this:


by the time we had finished up our totally awesome meal o' grill we went back to playing the very intense game of scrabble but this time with very attractive lighting:



and some new friends:


and then i KICKED ROGRAY'S ASS AT SCRABBLE!!!!!!!!!!!! BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!

the next morning rogray seemed to have shaken off the bitter disappointment of losing at the MOST IMPORTANT SCRABBLE GAME EVER



and got to work on breakfast:




you know it's glamping when you bring your french press and breakfast looks like this:



after breakfast rogray tried to fly like a turkey and no, i can't remember how this came about but i have it on camera which is really all that matters:



i think now you know why we might want to be in a more secluded environment. after we humiliated ourselves we went for a hike to the bash-bish falls.



which is in massachusetts!! we had to hike all the way to another state! that's how hardcore we are. state border crossing hardcore!!*

we finally got to the falls:


and had to take a break because of the strenuous nature of our journey. this is the canopy under which we lazed:


we then made the massive state border crossing trek back to new york



and promptly went for another bracing dip in the swimming hole. now, when i say bracing i mean this water was so cold that grown men who clearly wanted to be considered tough and awesome were too scared to jump in because of what might happen to their special man area. it was so cold that you spent the first 5 minutes shivering and the next 5 debating whether or not to pee so at least there would be a warm spot followed by the next 20 minutes swimming around looking for the warm spots and not caring if your floating in someone's urine because by god, at least it's warm. it was amazing.

after that lunch:


yeah, that's grilled bread. . .


and a very important game of boggle:



in which i KICKED ROGRAY'S ASS AT BOGGLE!!!!!!!!!!!! BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!

we celebrated by making daytime early birthday s'mores:


sadly, that brought our completely awesome surprise early birthday camping trip to a close. we drove back to brooklyn, loaded up our bags for our various trips and parted ways very, very early the next morning.

for all you interested in what you need to go glamping please feel free to ask me. and if you are looking for a great spot in the new york area i highly suggest this place. ..it's beautiful. . .
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*full disclosure: the whole hike is 1.5 miles--round-trip.

the times they are a'changing: scary edition

well, this is definitely what my mother fought for.

now, this bill probably won't pass but it scares the crap out of me that it's even up for discussion. . .ay ay ay.

Let the rain fall down. . .

i don't if you heard but apparently the world ended yesterday here in new york.

here is the only picture i took of the aftermath yesterday:



look closely, that tree got knocked over so hard the pavement came with it. koogs got pictures of more of the insane damage including a picture of a tree that was upside down in someone's front yard separated cleanly from it's base. . .the whole scene is bananas.

as much damage as there was i am amazed there wasn't more. if multiple trees were being ripped out of the pavement then it seems like some kind of miracle that more roofs weren't ripped off or that the apartment building surrounded by the damage (read: ours) weren't damaged. . .and another thing - i'm a complete scaredy cat. this is the one time that a massive, loud storm that kept me awake didn't scare the bejeezus out of me -- but had it scared me i might have looked out our bedroom window and seen a twister making it's way through the streets of brooklyn.