Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! We had a very scary day!

But let's back up. This Halloween was a lesson in urban living. It was eye-opening because of how different it was. For example, in Portland we always go to Sauvie Island to the pumpkin patch. I should say, one of many pumpkin patches -- vast expanses of pumpkins you can pick yourself. There's none of that out here. Even out in the far reaches of Long Island (The Hamptons) the only thing there are vast expanses of are million dollars homes, and marsh.

Secondly, what would you do with a carved pumpkin if not put it out on your front porch or walkway? We don't have one, we, like everyone in this city, live in buildings. We debated whether we should even carve them at all, since I didn't really want the smell of raw, carved pumpkin filling our living room. We decided, in the end, to go ahead and carve pumpkins the night before Halloween, and put them outside our door just for Halloween day.








With pumpkins carved, Halloween day arrived. This morning, we got the boys dressed up in their costumes:


On the left, Miles, we have an Alien. On the right, Damion, we have General Grevous (from Star Wars).




Let's not forget about our other little boy!


Oliver was extremely embarrassed in his costume, and basically hid away on the couch while he had it on. LOL

The boys had a Halloween parade at school today, so Kristal and I dressed up in our costumes and went to the parade:



Here's the boys at their parade:



See the Alien in there? :-)


General Grevous!

After school, we learned another lesson of Halloween here. Like I mentioned, everybody lives in buildings. There aren't any houses. So there really isn't trick or treating. At least, no neighborhood trick or treating. What happens here is that most of the shops on the main strip through town, Washington St., have candy and the kids trick or treat there. Hoboken has a pretty fun Halloween parade, and there were TONS of people there.

Us getting ready for the Halloween parade:

This doesn't really do it justice, but there were thousands of people out, trick or treating on Washington.


Here's Kris, Damion, and Miles rocking it:


Those bags are getting full!!

Me with the dog:


The costumed dachshund doesn't really add to the level of METAL I was going for:


And last but not least, what would a Halloween parade be without an Elvis impersonator:


Stay tuned, we got Kristal's birthday tomorrow which will most certainly lead to some epic blogging!!

Pollini, Crumb

Well, the critics didn't like Pollini's performance that we saw on Sunday. And they were luke-warm about Crumb on Monday.

Pollini Review, New York Times

Crumb Review, New York Times

Honestly, I have good taste in performers and composers. Really. :-)

Pics of Fall, Carnegie Hall!

Hello Gang,

Another catch up post. Seriously, I cannot keep up on all the stuff we have been doing lately! OK, first things first.

Last weekend my Grandpa Art and his wife Barbara were visiting New York. We had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with them and have dinner at a great restaurant in Times Square, Carmines. We really enjoyed our time with them!!


I should point out that Miles was taking this picture. I should also point out that there are three generations of Arthur Lance in this picture!

The next day, Sunday, we spent the day in the Hamptons. We wanted to spend one last time there, we loved it so much last time. After consulting the map (i.e. Blackberry) for some last minute directions:



We were off. We did some pumpkin shopping at a roadside farmers market:




And later ate lunch at a great lobster roll place called, locally, Lunch. Cameron Diaz ate here recently. So did Alex Baldwin.


These are blowfish poppers. They are actually the tails of blowfish, deep fried. They were awesome good.


Kristal got a haircut this week that was a complete change!

Before:


After!!


We spent a lot of time working on Damion's Halloween costume this week and weekend. He wanted to be perhaps the most challenging costume you could possibly get: General Grevous from Star Wars. I actually busted out needle and thread for a portion of it:

Clowning around:


Tonight we had a big night. Damion and I went to Carnegie Hall to see Maurizio Pollini perform a solo piano concert. Just a tad bit of background on this. Pollini is one of my favorite pianists, and has been since college. The first time Kristal and I came to New York City, it was because Pollini was performing a solo piano recital on my birthday, 2001. This year was his 40th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut, so it was really cool that I could take Damion to the concert. Here was the program:

BEETHOVEN	Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2, "The Tempest"
BEETHOVEN	Sonata No. 23 in F Minor "Appassionata"
SCHUMANN	Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17
CHOPIN	Four Mazurkas, Op. 33
CHOPIN	Scherzo No. 2

Damion and I got all dressed up for the occasion:





We had an amazing time tonight. Pollini is inhuman. Just a brief aside about this. In any musical performance, classical piano in particular, there is a sliding scale with technical accuracy on one end, and raw emotive passion on the other side. The pinnacle of any performance is when the performer can infuse so much emotion in their performance that it pushes technical accuracy right to the edge -- it is maintained, but right on the edge. Usually, if you pull back too far, the performance doesn't have wrong notes, but also lacks some sheer passion behind the performance.

Tonight, Pollini managed to break that model. The performance was outrageously energetic and passionate, yet he maintained his true form of technical flawlessness. It was incredible. There's a reason he can sell out two back-to-back shows in Carnegie Hall's largest auditorium. There are very, very few pianists alive today of the same caliber.

While Damion and I were at Carnegie Hall, Miles and Kristal went to the Manhattan Children's Museum, and had a great time! They saw some amazing exhibits.




Miles spent 30 minutes straight working on this cubic puzzle. The goal was to put the tetris-like pieces together into a cube. Mission Accomplished!


In the Greek Mythology exhibit, this was the Trojan Horse:




This looks like ancient Greek architecture blocks to me:


Afterwards, we ate at the Brooklyn Diner, a great restaurant right across the street from Carnegie Hall.

We shared the stories of our afternoons over milkshakes and dinner. The only last picture is here because you wouldn't believe me if I asked you to imagine an $18 hot dog. But here it is!


Welp, that's it for now! Kristal and I are going BACK to Carnegie Hall tomorrow night to see George Crumb and performances of three of his pieces. Yeah, I'm a Carnegie Hall freak. :-)

Family and Fall

As promised, a catch-up post to bring us up to date.

Last weekend we had the pleasure of spending Saturday with my cousin Eric and his girlfriend Jess.


We went into the city and ate lunch at the Stage Deli, where we enjoyed classic New York pastrami sandwiches. Now, a small apology for the following picture, but a picture trying to get one's mouth wrapped around a sandwich like this is a rite-of-passage, and so, I will shamelessly post one. :-)


We then walked through Times Square, and into the M&M's World store. There were whole walls of M&M dispensers!


We then walked up 5th Ave. to Trump Tower, took a coffee break there for a little while:


And then on to Central Park.



We had a great time that day, and were glad that Eric and Jess came to visit us!

Last weekend was also peak Fall Leaves viewing, so the next day, we drove up into the Catskills in up-state New York to look at leaves. Our destination was the largest two-tier waterfall in New York state, Kaaterskill Falls. You don't realize how many evergreens there are in the Pacific Northwest until you see fall leaves out here, because there are practically NO evergreens. Which means that EVERYTHING is changing color!

We had a great time on the somewhat challenging half-mile hike to the falls:




And we finally made it to the falls!





And a few more:




We captured a few pictures on the way home that really demonstrate how vast the color spectrum really is this time of year:





Drove past this place on the way home, thought it was funny:


All in all, a great time.

This past week, the boys had a school night at the Liberty Science Center, which is a science museum at Liberty State Park.





Never thought I'd get to give McCain rabbit ears!


There was a skyscraper exhibit, and this beam was from the twin towers. It was literally bent in half:




Well that's it. Stay tuned for the other stuff we have going on in the weeks to come!