The Great JDG Exchange of 2011

Last year ended like a maniac.

A brutal Winter may have wrapped up finally but a brutal Spring has taken its place.

There are countless storms brewing, humid temperatures to endure and hot train cars to complain about.

Tourists are milling on the streets of NYC, gawking and snickering and pointing.  I know they do not know me, but in my heart I feel as though they're just here to laugh at my sad little face as I stumble to work every morning.

Spring's in the air, and in our noses and eyes - allergies are hellish, to say the least.

But you know what else this April has brought?

Doctor Who.

And you know what the Doctor loves? Jammie Dodgers.

Jammie Dodgers may temporarily confuse and ultimately not save the Universes from Daleks but they do seem rather yummy.  So it got H1 and I thinking...

Are they?

And where can we get some?

When ideas brew, you run with it and if those ideas require a Call to Arms for a Jammie Dodger Trade, you listen to your brain!

There are two lessons The HOchieS learned from this exercise:

1. Somewhere out there, there's a friend willing to help some sisters out.  If you're lucky, you get two friends who are willing to help some sisters out.

2. Goldfish crackers are apparently a precious commodity in the U.K.

And with that, a pact was formed and The Great Jammie Dodgers/Goldfish Exchange of 2011 has begun!

We received our Jammies today...

The "Z" shape I made was unintentional.

Nightmares in the Garden

In what has to be the shortest scheduled time for a new, regular season layout, I give to you a page full of nightmares.

There was no love going on for oddly-coloured orchids with summery blue backgrounds or white blinding bamboo landscapes.  Or whatever.

Well, I still love you, weirdo cacophonous coloured orchids but you have weirded out your welcome.

Instead, I will present you with my recent nightmarish find in the garden.  There are a quite a few of them I discovered the eerily, chilly, still day but for now, an exuberant hello is in order for a very...ded fairy.

Perhaps it is a goodbye that needs to be issued?

Considering there are no such things are fairies anyway, there's no need to concern yourself with the Halfing adorning the new, new Spring layout for 2011.

P.S.: For some reason though, I have the urge to tell you - Don't even blink.

Happy Easter!

Today we will spend the day hunting for eggs, eating stuffing and having a tea party.  Mind you, these things may not necessarily be in that order.

We may even eat a peep or two.

Oh, stop you two peeps, with your quizzical bewilderment looks.  You know very well that's what's going to happen today.

NO!

Gerard Smith of Tv on the Radio passed away today.

Rest in peace, man with a whole lot of funk and a whole lot of soul.

I'm enjoying your bass lines so prevalent throughout this latest album and I'm sorry you were gone so young and in such a gut wrenching way.

I was afforded the opportunity of seeing your band just one week ago today at their first show at Radio City Music Hall, and you were missed.

You will be missed.

=,(

What You Need

All you need in life sometimes is some home-cooked curried crab and dumplings.

Plus a cold one

Bye Winter...Sort Of

Midway through April and we are bidding farewell to Winter.  While that should have been done some weeks ago, it certainly has still been very ass cold around here.

A day or two were sprinkled in with some mild weather but winter coats have still not gone away.

The upcoming week may look promising and many of the trees have begun to show signs of bloom.  With that, we bid adieu to the snow and ice-covered ground, burying our fallen pine tree branch.

We're saying hello to two purple orchids garnering a conversation about all the people staring, about sunlight, about the rain showers, and the birds that are singing happily in the distance.

A Little Bit Dangerous

There are some bands that take the stage, and immediately the sound hits you hard and you know it's going to be great.

TV on the Radio did it better.

I love the RCMH banner! Next time I'll get a proper picture.

At The NY Botanical Gardens: The Orchid Show! (a.k.a "Trini Bush")

Today, The HOchieS ventured to the Boogie-Down Bronx to visit the NY Botanical Gardens' The Orchid Show on Broadway.

I do not remember if I have ever been to the Gardens.  Really! Not sure at all... and that's...weird.  But there's much to do in our fair state and I've done not even 1/4 of it all.

Anyway, with membership passes, we packed up and got there at about 10:45 a.m.

It was a cool day, the Gardens open at 10 a.m. on Sundays and it was already crowded.  This is just a mental note to ourselves that people flock to the Gardens regardless of whether we think we're beating them to it on 'early' on a Sunday morning.  Don't you people sleep in some? No? I sure could have slept some more this morning.

Well, whatever it was, it was crowded (and still no cool kids at the exhibit! No one had a 3DS to do Streetpass with me.  Psh.) but manageable, and rather lovely.

Except of course, these things may be exotic to some but to us HOchieS, the Orchid Show and some of many of the greenery we saw are so commonplace and plentiful in Trinidad that we were not as 'wowed' as we probably could have been.  We lived there for so long, and had so many of these particular plants and trees along with fruit trees in our backyard that, well... meh.  Yeah, meh.

It was certainly beautiful and the Botanical Gardens designers, and staff did a wonderful job of the Exhibit but yeah, meh.  I know, we are awful.

And yet, I still managed to take 400 pictures there.

With that said, here are some pictures of flowers for all to enjoy!

(All pictures were taken by H1 and/or myself.  While I will spare you the 400+, this post is coming up bazoobs.  And by that, I mean there are still a lot of them to see):

Silly me, these aren't flowers!

Oooooo

Not the Glamour Shots I Had Hoped For

Yeah, so I wanted to some how incorporate pictures of Judge Magister Gabranth into my earlier post about my concert almost one week ago... (wow! It's just about Friday already again.  Awesome).

Unfortunately, I could find no way to write him in, so instead I'll just call this my photography post...the one where I use the macro lens to do stuff.

And FAIL!

Observations of the Past 2 Weeks

Do you see those trailers right there?

Those trailers contain the DNA of Matt Bomer or Tim DeKay.  Or possibly, Willie Garnet.  Maybe...Tiffany Thiessen?

Or even...! None of those people?

Whatever or whoever was in there, those were trailers set up for the filming of one of my favourite current shows, White Collar.

From NYC to Distant Worlds

I have partaken in some extraordinary nerd-ish behaviour in my time.

Of these...uh, exploits...there are three major ones that I can readily think of.

1.  2001 - I went to Otakon.  It was there I stood in line at a signing to meet Kawamoto Toshihiro. He signed my Cowboy Bebop wall scroll, scrawling his name all over Jet's hand (because no one respects Jet! except me?); and I made Kawamoto-san's hand smell bad for having to touch and pin down my unruly wall scroll as it threatened to make a mess of the table.

It was not my fault the wall scroll smelt of ass.  I bought it in Baltimore and who knows what was going on that weekend but the entire downtown area surrounding the convention center smelt terrible.

I always "jest" that I probably made the poor man ill because he had cookies on the table.  I'm sure he ate the cookies with his bad-smelling hand.

Zarnyx: The Nintendo 3DS Edition

I have had the 3DS for just shy of an entire week.

I did not attend the Best Buy Union Square NYC Launch Party, I canceled my pre-order on Amazon and opted instead, to pre-order the thing at damned Nintendo World in NYC.

It was the wrong move to make and I knew as much a week before the blasted thing launched.

I got zero swag from Nintendo World, and just about as much fanfare on the Monday - one day after its U.S. launch.

The girl who rang me up at 9 a.m. was less than enthusiastic.

While I was not impressed by the swag anyway (sour grapes! sour grapes! - no really, the case would have been awesome but everything else was mostly 'meh'), it still sucks to get nothing when I'm used to the opposite.

But that's okay.

I love my Aqua Blue.  For the most part.

Zarnyx, the Aqua Blue Nintendo 3DS.

Obsessions of the Week(s): 2/26/2011 - 4/01/2011

Man, I'm really slack with these obsessions.  And slacker still, as you shall soon see!

Bird's Custard

Good for regular custard eating, for making a wagom full of pamcakes, and for The HOchieS' all round well-being and happiness: Bird's Custard should be a Crown Jewel and placed in the Tower of London. There, I said it.

The April Fool is Not Me: Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. Hare, Hare, Hare.

It's not like I forgot or anything to do the monthly ritual.  Heh.  Heheheheheh.  Eh heh. Hmm.

See, what happened was, I figured we could do things a little bit different because who knows if Luck is a Prankster? If I were to wish everyone good luck on the first day of the month of April, would it count? Or would it be an April's Fool joke?

So today instead, on April 2nd, I'm wishing everyone the best of luck this month.

I think about you guys.

One Week, Two Chinatowns - Part II

Had the N train not decided to run like rubbish on Friday morning, the trip to Brooklyn would have not taken the extra half an hour longer than it did.

The extra half an hour really cut into our dim sum eating time! But, now we know it can easily be done and East Harbor Seafood Palace is within reach for future jaunts without having to drive to Brooklyn in a mini-van with which to both embarrass and kidnap Beetchie.

The entire day was hit with snafu after snafu.  Beetchie unfortunately got food poisoning, and could not partake in the dim sum feast.  We almost did not see her, actually.  We also forgot that Alex was not eating meat on Fridays during lent, and all the pork I ordered did not go to waste, but there could have been more and/or different types of pork on the table.

Also, being super late led us to not having the luxury to relax, take pictures at leisure or do any such thing.  It turned out to be a really long day.

Spare rib tips were excellent here.

One Week, Two Chinatowns - Part I

This week, Beetchie made an NYC appearance for Spring Break.  Although it was not completely planned, we ended hitting up Chinatown in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

It's been some time since H1 and I have been to Chinatown in Manhattan (well, H1 went in January without me).  Though it has been pretty cold and the streets were fairly empty, there was something just off with Canal Street on Monday evening when we went.

It was... clean.  There were new buildings, and worst of all, it was not shady at all.  It was rather jarring, and completely odd.  A clean Chinatown just sort of seems wrong.  It shocked me in Yokohama, and it certainly scared me when H1 and I stepped off the N train line.

Maybe it was the light of the evening?

...Followed by the Successful Sunday

For some reason, H1 and I have been going on a cooking rampage.  Is it due to the fact that I enjoy torturing my frenemies with things they are unable to eat because they live in different states? What's that Beetchie and MC? You think that's what it is?

Oh no.

That would be evil of us!

We're so far from evi...uh.  Never mind.

It seems I may have forgotten myself and my middle name for a second.

Although, truth be told, I would like to call these cooking sessions as...practice.  Yes! Trying and perfecting recipes, so that when you people come around, we can replicate them for you.

See? There's no evil in our hearts.

Just maybe some hunger to go along with that good intention.

Being hungry, caring people, we decided to continue our Saturday cooking spree into Sunday by making grilled skirt steak with a port wine mushroom sauce over couscous.

The Semi Successful Saturday...

There were plans to make a lot more today but time got away from us! Running around town for over an hour in search of ingredients can do that to you.

Instead our plans will spill over to today and hopefully all will get done.

In any event, H1 did manage to cook up some good times for us.

What is it, you ask? Why...

Happy Birthday, Bs!

Today, the HOchieS are wishing Clee and Beetchie a fine day full of Birthday cheer and Birthday beer, respectively. 

Sorry this is so late but you know, I forgot.  Bwahahahaha.  Just kidding.

Lots of love!

Beware the Ides of March

Ah, my favourite none gift-giving day of the year.

Please be very mindful today to watch your back.

Also, if you have any friends named "Brutus" and/or "Cassius" and they happen to have a bunch of shady questionable council of friends, you may want to strongly consider breaking off those friendships right about now...  Unless it's too late for you, then I am sorry I did not post this yesterday.

Happy Ides, Everyone!

Currently listening to: "Big Bang Baby" by Stone Temple Pilots.  Man, that's so wrong.

A Successful Sort of Saturday

Saturday was one of those winning kind of days for The HOchieS.

It was not the 'winning' Charlie Sheen kind of day, no.  There were no drugs, no 'baby-sitters', no porn stars and no crazy.

Perhaps someone would find that much of a 'losing' sort of day for us...

Your dirty thoughts aside, H1 and I set out to try new recipes this day, starting with bacon cheddar pop-overs for breakfast.

Bits of Bacon Goodness

Out of the oven

Happy 3.14 Day!

Today is Pi Day, and I have failed to eat any pi(e).  I did eat some custard and rice pudding (more to come later on that rice pudding - oh yes).  That's still a fail, I understand but...

...I did do some math today though! That's gotta count for something, right? So what if the math did not involve circles? Stop looking at me like I'm a bad person!

I hope everyone had a more successful pie eating and algebraic day than I.

Currently listening to: "Island of Dragons" by Tsuyoshi Sekito from the Brave Fencer Musashiden Original Soundtrack.

To Japan

I could sit here and write about the millions of things that went through my head today, and how tearful and sad I was but there is only one thing that really needs to be said.

The HOchieS have Japan and all in the world affected, in our thoughts, after the horrific 8.9 earthquake that hit the country.