yesterday we biked uptown along the hudson river to the topmost neighborhood in manhattan, inwood, to visit the cloisters.

it was quite hot out, but the ride was beautiful and thanks to the awesome parks system, uninterrupted by traffic, because the hudson river park runs all the way up the west side of manhattan. the cloisters was very cool, and featured a lovely outdoor garden

as well as some really cool stained glass, which I am a huge fan of in general:

afterwards, we stopped at dinosaur bbq for lunch. I had heard this place was awesome, and it was good, but I wasn’t a big fan of the brisket, and prefer both hill country and pete’s waterfront ale house for nyc bbq.

here is all the pictures we took.

cool article about our neighborhood in the times!

this week I made dal with red lentils and rhubarb, along with standard spices (turmeric, cloves, cardamom, pepper). turned out really well! the rhubarb kind of disintegrates into the dal, leaving a nice aroma/flavor.in other news, I never really noticed before, but greenmarkets are horrendously expensive in comparison to fairway. mesclun greens are 12.99/lb at the park slope greenmarket, as compared to 5.99/lb at fairway. I am happy to pay a premium for locally grown stuff, but it’s not always clear to me that everything at the greenmarket is in fact locally grown.

workout today:Complete as many rounds in twenty minutes as you can of:
65 Pound Thruster, 10 reps
10 Pull-ups

ugh, I lost count of rounds due to various gym snafus (some random guy needs to use power rack, etc). between 8 and 10 sets, however I had to switch to assisted pullups 3 rounds in. super sore right now, glad tomorrow is a legit rest day.

sarah and I just started training for the brooklyn half marathon, on april 26th. I am really looking forward to doing this, as I’ve lost 15 pounds since I ran the marathon and am a much faster runner as a result. also I’ve been boxing a lot and it can be hard to put in miles when doing a lot of other training, so this should be a good motivator to pound the pavement. balmy days in february don’t hurt either.

long time, no post. got a bunch of cool books for xmas, hung out with family/friends and generally had a nice holiday after a less than stellar december. the other day at my boxing gym there was a grudge match between two dudes who got into an argument at work! I guess they decided to take it to the ring as they rented out a ring and went 4 rounds and looked super pissed at each other! bruce, the gym owner hooked them up with trophies at the end and that seemed to cool everyone out.

on an unrelated note, come be my interwebs friend on goodreads!

saw wes anderson’s new flick, “the darjeeling ltd”. I liked it better than steve zissou and less than the royal tenenbaums and rushmore. the great thing about watching wes anderson movies in the theatre is everyone laughs in different places.

also went to a gamelan concert this afternoon which was really cool, and recommended by steven smith on his excellent blog. it was a really great show, you really get the sense that everyone is playing a single instrument rather than individual instruments in unison.

last week when we picked up milo we had breakfast at this place in frenchtown, pa. they have these cream cheese eggs that sarah loves, and great granola pancakes. I tried making my own this weekend (just added granola into the batter of regular pancakes) and they came out so good I made them both days this weekend. add raisins if you are feeling extra saucy and have some extra raisins (I was and I did).

here’s an mp3 of wataru uchida, scott schaeffer and myself playing “bye bye blackbird” at the end of our gig at room 18 this tuesday. recorded with my new zoom H2 recorder, which records wavs or mp3s. we are playing at room 18 every tuesday from 9pm-12, so swing on by if you’re in the neighborhood!

all of these taken this summer