Kayaking in Jamaica Bay

If there's one thing this blog has taught you, it's that we have decided we love kayaking. As such, we recently went and did it (for free) in Jamaica Bay, down at the south/southeastern edge of Brooklyn. Our excursion-mates were a pair of retired couples (it was the middle of the day on a Thursday). Our tourguide was a very nice park ranger. We saw some Horseshoe crabs laying their eggs. It was fun!








I TOLD YOU SHE IS OBSESSED WITH BIRDS!







So, here's something funny about the below picture. While we were out on the water, Karen started to tell me about how she wanted her own life vest. "It would just fit so much better!" She said. "Whenever we borrow them, they always fit weird, and we look sooooo dorky." I said that sounded reasonable (Chris did not actual say this was a reasonable idea in the slightest~Karen's edit), but that I could think of about 600 things we should buy before we should start buying our own life vests (like for example, a car, our own house, and a kayak). It was only when I got home and looked at these pictures that I realized that everything she'd been saying about how the life vests fit poorly and made us look dorky was based on looking at what a giant dork I looked like in mine. Which she admitted! Just thought I'd share.

Doubles!!!

Despite living in very close proximity to some of the city's best doubles for six years, I had never had them until recently. Because of Karen's urging. She likes to remind me of this.

Let me back up. Doubles are Caribbean food, specifically from Trinidad and Tobago. They're soft bread, similar to naan, filled with a chic pea curry (there are 2 pieces of bread, hence the "double." Or at least we think that's the reason). It's more than a bit like Indian food, which isn't really an accident - after the British outlawed slavery throughout the Empire in the 1830s, the Caribbean began importing indentured servants from around the Empire. Trinidad got most of theirs from India; today, it's estimated that up to 40% of the population can trace its ancestry to Indian migrants.

So, their food is a lot like Indian food. And it's SUPER DELICIOUS and SUPER CHEAP. This whole feast above (2 doubles, a roti, and an Aloo pie) set us back about $8 or $9.

Royal Pains

Karen and I, as everyone knows (because we won't shut up about it), do a bit of side work as MOVIE STARS. Or, you could say, "extras" in "some weird TV shows." Either way, we both had the good fortune to get cast on the same shoot a few weeks ago for this USA show "Royal Pains." It's about a "serious" doctor who through some kind of unlikely circumstances becomes a private physician for a bunch of obscenely wealthy people in the Hamptons who he hates, but are rich, so, you know, he puts up with it.

Anyway! For our scene, they bussed us about 2 hours out of the city to Long Island. We were shooting in the slightly misleadingly-named Oheka Castle, which is really more of a country club than a "castle," per se. It was, however, not a bad place to hang out for a few hours with your significant other, and get paid to boot.

This was the view from the "castle's" lawn. Not too shabby!
















Sort of a moody shot of the castle itself.

















This is a surreptitiously-snapped photo I took during the actual filming. It was supposed to be a bachelor party, but was really more of just a regular party. It looked really cool, though!











Last but FAR from least, here is The Lady herself, in a photo you may recognize from FaceBook, looking positively radiant.

Leslie and Rob's Visit

My brother Rob and his wife Leslie came not too long after Karen's parents for a whirlwind visit. We had an unspoken agreement to try and tire ourselves out as quickly as possible by cramming about four days' worth of visiting into just two days.

This is them. Such nice folks!





The number one thing they wanted to accomplish this visit was seeing this historic cemetery. Which, okay, is a little odd. But! It was in fact very beautiful, and had some incredible architecture. This, for example, is the cemetery's chapel, and was designed by the same team that made Grand Central Station. I guess you could call it "Grand Ghost Central."












This is the view from next to that chapel. With that doorway built into the hillside, it reminds me of Hobbit Holes in the Shire.














This is some kids you may be familiar with, looking amazing despite the temperature, which was honestly 1000 degrees Fahrenheit.










Then we went to Cony Island. Rob turned out to be a total master of this one game, where you hit a button to make a light stop moving right on a little target. He won about a million tickets, but gave up on redeeming them because the line was too long, and the prizes were incredibly dumb. These very tickets are sitting under my bedside table this very instant!







This is the view from a pier at Coney Island. There were a fair number of people there!