Day: July 27, 2009

Back at the Museum + Extreme Monday Sugar Rush: Two Little Red Hens

Back to work today!  Theresa and I will be downstairs in the subcellar this week cataloging works.  Today we worked on a series of really fabulous oversized Buckminster Fuller prints.  I love getting to see and handle the art, and today we were extremely up close and personal.  My only real coplaint about the subcellar is that it can be a little inefficient, especially when handling large works.  We need art handlers to deal with large prints, so sometimes it can be a little slow if the art handlers are busy.  Still, I really love the prints with which we are working.  Later this week we’ll get to sit in on a curatorial meeting where the curators approve new works–we get to watch said approval and then curate said works.

After work I decided I needed cupcakes, stat.  I trekked across the Upper East Side to Two Little Red Hens and was caught in a monsoon-style rainstorm right when I hit 2nd and 80th.  I battled the rain to the cupcake shop and ordered several cupcakes to go as well as two mini-cupcakes (red velvet and yellow cake with vanilla frosting) to keep me company while I waited out the rain.

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The monsoon eventually reduced to a drizzle and I headed back to my apartment to meet up with Mara, who had to collect her bag before heading back to Chapel Hill;  I’ll be following her in a week.  Yay.

I decided to have some of one of my cupcakes as a pre-dinner snack.

Brooklyn Black Out, Yellow cake with chocolate frosting, red velvet cake
Brooklyn Black Out, Yellow cake with chocolate frosting, red velvet cake

Since I’d never had Brooklyn Blackout I decided to try some of that cupcake first.  The Brooklyn Blackout is a lot of chocolate: fudgey cake, chocolate topping, etc.

Brooklyn Blackout
Brooklyn Blackout

Also, a little something extra on the inside: CHOCOLATE. PUDDING.  Chocolate pudding, in a cupcake!  Genius!

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I love pudding and I love cupcakes so this really was an all-around win.  However I only had a few bites, because I wanted to a) eat dinner and b) go to the gym.  Also c) don’t want to get fat.  I had a few bites of the red velvet for dessert post-dinner (the red velvet at Two Little Red Hens is to die for, lovely and light and fluffy and the cream cheese frosting is amazing).  I’ll nosh on the cupcakes through the week as little snacks.  If I ate all three at once it’d be delicious but also a failure in terms of common sense.

I spent the rest of the evening post-gym cleaning house and beginning to pack.  I have a busy week ahead so I wanted to ensure domesticity while I had the time.  We’re in the home stretch, y’all!

Second to last Sunday in New York City

With Chapel Hill visitors.

Mara, Diane, and I went to the Frick today.  Yes, I finally got to the Frick, which is five blocks down from me so I really have no excuse.  Except that I have been twice before and it is a fairly static museum but whatever.  The Frick is treasure of a collection: every work is stellar (Vermeers! Titians!  Bronzino! Rembrandt! Etc.!) and it is housed amongst the beautiful stately decorative arts furnitures owned by the Frick family.  So basically you are wandering around a dead white man’s mansion, starring at this dead white man’s treasures.  And such treasures.  Along with the aforementioned names there are also many lovely Gainsboroughs and several rooms worth of Bouchers complete with the lovely cherubic dolls faces.  Also, many Whistlers.  Oh and even a Duccio.  The mansion is structured around a beautiful interior courtyard that has a fountain decorated with little bronze frogs.  Frogs people.  Since I’d been to the Frick several times, and since the art presented at the Frick isn’t really my art of choice (beautiful art, yes, but I still prefer my 20th century and contemporary art) I spent a lovely twenty-thirty minutes in said fountained courtyard reading my book.  Very happy.

After our visit to the Frick we parted ways–Mara and Diane to the Met, and myself back home to do some domestic activities and to catch up on my blog.  The Met on weekends scares me because it is so crowded, and I plan on trying to get back there this week for one more visit before I leave New York.

Diane returned around 4:00 to collect her things and head off to catch the train to Saratoga, where her family lives.  Mara and I met up around 5:30 and headed to dinner at Zucchero e Pomodori, this Italian place adjacent to my gym that I have been dying to try.  Every time I walk by this restaurant I see really wonderful plates of pasta and bread baskets filled with delicious looking foccacia.  We timed dinner perfectly: right when we got inside it began to pour and storm torrentially, and the rain let up as soon as we were leaving.  Perfect.

I ordered eggplant parmigan, and Mara ordered a seafood studded pasta.  We were both pleased with our dishes, and I was especially pleased by how light and sweet my eggplant were.  I could’ve used a bit more of the mozzarella with which they’d studded the eggplant, however.

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After dinner Mara headed to Lincoln Center to see one of the films being shown by the Film Society and I headed to the gym for some much needed cardio.  Sometimes you just need to zone out.  I then ran errands, came home, prepped for the week, etc.  Last week people!  I can hardly believe it.  And I am most ready to get back to the Whitney tomorrow and resume my work.