the IKEA saga

A couple of weeks ago, I had had enough. My creaky old bed frame had caused me to wake up in the middle of the night for the last time. It had served me well for the last seven or eight years or so, but it had to go. Time to buy a new bed frame.

This new frame would be the first I've ever bought - I had survived with a futon through college, living in San Francisco, and my first couple of years in New York. I upgraded to a mattress on the futon frame until Heidi moved out of our apartment on Union Street to move in with her boyfriend. She offered me her bed frame since she wouldn't be needing it anymore. With a box spring and the super cushy pillow top mattress, my bed looked like it was right out of the Princess in the Pea story; the top of the bed was at least three feet off the floor, and I felt like I needed a step stool to get into it. I traded the box spring for sheets of plywood, and the bed was down to a normal height. Having dumped my college era sleeping furniture, it was one of those many moments of feeling like an adult that I had in my early 30's. Silly, I know.

On one of my Friday's off, I headed down to Pier 11 to catch the Water Taxi to IKEA. I had spotted a bed on their website that I liked - it was simple, basically a wooden box with drawers, no headboard - but wanted to look at it, sit on it, and basically make sure it wasn't a total piece of crap. I also just liked the idea that I could get to IKEA via water; I didn't have to deal with taking the subway to the decrepit Smith / 9th Street F station over the Gowanus, and then taking the bus through the no man's land that is Red Hook. There are good things in Red Hook, the Lobster Pound comes to mind, but taking that B61 bus is not one of them.


After a relatively short journey, I find myself quickly winding my way through the maze of IKEA in search of their bedroom furniture section. I'm not looking at anything else, I'm on a mission, I find the bed, it looks good. I buy it, then take the ferry back home to wait for delivery. After a couple of hours, the delivery guys arrive with the bed. They bring it inside my apartment, and I'm pretty excited to have my new bed.

That is, until I open the box. Three of the pieces are damaged. Unfortunately, there is no white glove service with IKEA. I briefly consider trying to jury rig the pieces to get them to work, but realize it's no use. I call IKEA in defeat to see what can be done.

After many phone calls with customer service where the low point was their representative suggesting that I could go out to Paramus, NJ to go buy a new bed, I settle on reordering the bed from their online store. I'm now waiting on a call from their delivery service for tomorrow's arrival of the new bed. Hopefully, it will all arrive in one piece.

For the past two weeks, I've been sleeping with my mattress on the floor, since I had dismantled the old creaky bed prior to seeing the crushed IKEA pieces. I feel like I'm back to the days on Union Street, back to before I had a bed and felt like an adult. It's slightly unsettling, but at least my bed is not waking me up at 3AM.

The Food of my Ancestors

I recently discovered I have a real talent for cooking potatoes. Shocking, I know, the staple of the Irish diet. Growing up, we had some form of potatoes for dinner nearly every night, usually mashed or baked. I had no appreciation for the tuber. Blech. Boring, boring white food.

For a Fourth of July afternoon cookout at the Community Boat House, I planned to make a roasted potato cold salad. I typically just cover the potatoes in olive oil, and put in some rosemary, salt, and pepper. I decided to change it a bit, and added some cayenne pepper and nutmeg. I also had some tomatoes that needed to have something done to them, so I cut them in half and through them in with the potatoes for the last couple of minutes. Then I spotted the sliced almonds in my cabinet, and they were added as well. I was making it up as I went along, and it turned out pretty delicious.

My friend Heidi had a party for the final game of the World Cup, so I was on the search for a recipe for patatas bravas to root for Spain. When I lived in San Francisco, there were a couple of tapas restaurants that had the most amazing potato dish, and my hope was to find something to replicate it.

I sent out a plea on Facebook, asking if anyone had a recipe for the amazing potato. My friend Alex emailed me a recipe he had from a book by Penelope Casas, Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain. Recipe is listed below.

Serves 4
2 Medium-Large potatoes
2 medium-large potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch chunks
Olive oil
Salt
Alioli Sauce (below), thinned to sauce consistency if necessary

AIOLI SAUCE
1 cup mayonnailse, preferably homemade
4 or more cloves garlic, mashed to a paste or put through a garlic press

To make the Alioli, combine the mayonnaise and garlic. Let sit at room temperature until ready to use

TOMATO SAUCE
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 glove garlic, minced
3 medium tomatoes (about 3/4 pound), chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1/2 dried red chili pepper, seeded and crumbled, or 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Dash of Tabasco sauce
1 bay leaf
1/8 teaspoon sugar
Salt
Fresh ground pepper

Grease a roasting pan and arrange the potatoes in one layer. Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake at 375ºF for about 45 minutes, or until golden and crisp.
Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce. Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the onion and garlic until the onion is wilted. Add the tomatoes and sauté for another few minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, wine, water, parsley, chili pepper, Tabasco, bay leaf, sugar, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain. The sauce should not be too thick---thin with water if necessary.
To serve, arrange the potatoes in a bowl or on a dish. Spoon on several tablespoons of the tomato sauce, then 3 or 4 tablespoons of the Alioli. (note: You may make this dish without the Alioli, if you prefer.)

Today in sports

As most of you probably know, I'm not the biggest sports fan, but today was crazy! US wins their group in the World Cup! There was screaming in the streets, strangers hugging each other over the win, you'd think we were anywhere else in the world other than on American soil.

There was spontaneous National Anthem singing:
http://nymag.com/daily/sports/2010/06/the_scene_outside_dempseys_aft.html

Although when I first saw this without headphones, and it looked like a bunch of flag waving folk protesting the UPS truck. At least they knew all the words, unlike half of the US team.

After spending the morning watching Univision.com, the only site with live streaming of the games (although the only word I can understand is "GOAL!), and then a brief celebration with co-workers who all wished we could just go out and get a beer (unfortunately, we had a continuing education seminar scheduled for lunch), things seemed to setting down. Then a friend sent me this link, a live feed from Wimbledon:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/8753437.stm

10 hours? 59-59 in the 5th set? both players winning aces on their 58th point? This is pure insanity. This one match will be going into it's third day tomorrow. It's also only the second round. If these two guys are fighting this hard just to advance, who knows what they could do in the later rounds. We'll probably never find out though as they both collapse from exhaustion tomorrow.

World Cup Fever

New blog templates, thank you Google. If only I could make one myself, if only I was that clever...or knew someone who was.

Anyway, every four years or so, most of the world's attention turns to the World Cup. Except for the US. With the exception of New York City. Nearly every bar with a TV is broadcasting all the games, and my only regret is that they are not timed to typical lunch time. 10AM? Too early. 2PM? Too late. I only have the upper reaches of ESPN channel 170 which repeats the games at night so I can watch The Beautiful Game as the Brazilians like to call it. I don't care that I already know the score.

On the eve before the final matches of Group C, I find myself actually hoping that the US gets into the Knockout Round. I'm not a big fan of US Soccer; it just pales in comparison to the European teams, not to mention the South Americans. In general, they're inconsistent, and just seem to lack the passion of the world powerhouses (that may be because they have relatively so few fans). But this time seems different. Keep in mind, this US team nearly won the Confederations Cup last year, losing only against Brazil. England also is just not up to their usual standards, and it looks like the second spot for advancement will be us or them. As a person of Irish decent, can I really route for the English? No, I say! That may have more to do with the fact Becks isn't playing this time around, even if he is there as silent support for them. I just hope it doesn't come down to a coin toss between them. It could happen - those are the crazy rules of the World Cup.

England isn't the only traditionally strong team that is having a poor showing - Italy lets the match with New Zealand, a team that consists of a mix of professional and amateur players, end in a draw? Spain loses to Switzerland? Don't even get me started on the train wreck of France. They've just fallen into soap opera histrionics and even seemed to be throwing their match today to South Africa in protest.

There is one good thing about the high number of upsets - what teams will end up in the round of 16 is unpredictable. NY Mag online had a list of scenarios for what would have to happen for each team to move on to the next round, and it's mind boggling. Lots of 'if/then' situations that read like math proofs and information about goal differential. No one seems safe, which makes for some interesting games.

The only countries that seem to have a slight cushion are the South Americans. All the participating countries won their first match, and then there is Argentina who won all three. Brazil and Chile may match that feat in their groups, but they are each facing Portugal and Spain respectively. I hope they pull it out, especially Brazil. Two reasons: I've chosen them to take it all in my office pool, and I cannot stand the Portuguese pretty boy, Christian Ronaldo (apologies to all my Portuguese friends).

With South Africa hosting, I think there was a lot of hope for more African teams advancing. Unfortunately, it looks like it may only be Ghana, but with the way things could go, who knows?

Back to my original point: why isn't the US consumed with soccer? Why do we call it soccer when it is called football nearly everywhere else? Some people say that it's the low scoring potential. To this I say that low scoring has nothing to do with the excitement of the match. There is constant movement, the ball is always in motion, and if you've got a lot of shots on goal in a game, there's nothing more nail biting even if the score is 0-0. The time keeping is better than any US sport: 45 minute halves with a couple of minutes added for injury time. With a cushion of 10 minutes, you know pretty precisely when the game with end. There is no overtime, a tie is an acceptable result (maybe that's why it's not popular in the US, no winner).

Obviously, most Americans have not watched soccer on Univision. If that had, there would be no resisting the excitement when the sportscaster yells, "GGGGGOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!!!

Four years from now, I'm definitely headed to Brazil. What better place to see the World Cup?

Where the winds come sweeping down the plain

My firm recently was awarded a project in Tulsa, OK (see, "the big Driller" on the left). When the marketing team was putting together the proposal and told me that I would be the Project Architect if we were to get the contract, I joked about how I couldn't wait to work on a project in Oklahoma, so I could go to the land of The Flaming Lips. Well, we got it, and I found myself on Tuesday, frantically finishing up some plans so that I could be ready to leave for the airport when the car came at 3:30PM.

There had been talk the week before. Tulsa? Really? A project in The Middle? Jimmy had joked about not knowing who would be more out of place, me, or Richard, the partner in charge of the project. Other than Chicago (which doesn't even really count), I'd never really been anywhere in The Middle. I'd driven across country once, and ridden the train when I moved from Virginia to San Francisco, but I don't think that really counts.

Tulsa is green, and has a few small rolling hills. Since I was expecting total flatness, almost to an oppressive amount of sky flatness, this was somewhat surprising. Even more shocking - Tulsa has a great number of interesting buildings. As I learned while I was there for a couple of short days, Tulsa was a very wealthy city during the oil boom, and had done an impressive job of creating a beautiful sky line (well, at least until skyscrapers found their way there). They have a great collection of Art Deco architecture throughout the city.

The most well known would be the Boston Avenue Methodist Church by Bruce Goff. There is a rumor however that a woman working for him was the true designer (just like Camille Claudel and Rodin!) The project I'm working on is for the Philbrook Museum of Art, and the founder of the Museum was Waite Philips, an oilman of the Philips Petroleum family. As we toured around the city on our last day, we saw a couple of the other projects commissioned by him - The Philtower and Philcade - and both were impressive in their own right.

All in all, it doesn't seem like a bad place to spend some time. All the consultants that we met with while there are going to be great to work with, and the client is really satisfied with their decision to hire us (we found out that our competition was two other NYC architects).

One nagging question I have, which was the same as with the Cooper-Hewitt project here: Where are the other women? Why are all of the architects or engineers at a project manager level men? It seems that there are always women at the client side of the table, and Historic Preservation offices have no shortage of women, but why is it always me, alone at the table on the consultant side on these larger institutional projects? It's a bit frustrating.

The vasty deep

SPOILER ALERT: This post may be depressing.

One of the things that has surprised me about settling into my forty's is the number of times I've spent comforting my parents when a friend of their's dies. My parents have a lot of friends; they are in their 70's, and unfortunately over the last couple of months, they've lost a lot of people close to them.

A recent conversation with my father:

ME: How's Mr. Condon doing? (Back story: right before Thanksgiving, a dear friend of my parents, a contractor who had rebuild their kitchen about 18 years ago, had been diagnosed with Kidney cancer. Being 82, he had decided not to undergo surgery.)
DAD: Oh, he died.

Then there was silence. The last couple of times I had asked this question when I talked to my dad is that his friend was still in the hospital, but was doing ok.

A couple of weeks later, when I was in San Francisco with my mother for Erin's baby shower, she casually mentioned that Mrs. MacVicar had died. Being in her late 80's, she was one of my parents' older friends. She hadn't been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. A couple of weeks later, my dad told me that Mr. MacVicar had died. He had been my father's barber for 20 years. A couple of years ago, my mother made my dad stop seeing him, because he would cut and talk and cut and talk and talk and talk, and my father would come back with a very choppy cut with very little hair left. He really enjoyed talking to Fred though.

Before the recent spate, in October, there was also Mr. Fagan, one of my parents' oldest friends from the Irish crowd. He died of a long battle with Prostate Cancer. His death was somewhat of a comfort - he had been sick for six or seven years. Shockingly, two months later in the days leading up to Christmas, another friend from the NJ Irish crowd, Mr. Lynch, died suddenly at home.

They have lost five friends in six months. When I was up visiting my dad the weekend of my nephew's and my birthday we were talking about it. After a draining conversation, he simply said, "Kerry, I'm just tired of going to funerals."

Last week, my cousin Maureen sent an email about my Aunt Totta, her mother. She had been diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. She's 78, and she's my last aunt/uncle on my mother's side. The other three, my mother's brother and sister, and my mother's sister's husband, have died of cancer. There is way too much of that disease in my extended family. She's doing well right now, but I keep thinking it's just a matter of time.

Right now, I've very thankful for my parents' health. Even considering my dad's heart attack from two years ago, they're both relatively healthy.

gadgets

I have a thing for gadgets. I'm just really intrigued by things that can make certain tasks easier but are, in reality, totally unnecessary. I could be wrong, but it seems like a truly American thing to get the brightest minds together to come up with devices to make life in the US even more convenient, as long as you have the means to buy them For example, the image to the left is an egg topper, that allows one to remove the top of a hard boiled egg without burning one's fingers.

I recently received an electric toothbrush for my birthday, and was so excited that for a moment I thought that this was the best present I'd received in a long time - dental hygiene is high up on my list. I'm convinced that my teeth are so much cleaner, and that my dentist is going to be so happy with me the next time I see him. This is what the best devices do; they make people believe that machines are the way to better living.

Other devices that are in my future (that is, once I'm returned to full time work...):

The KitchenAid stand mixer: A friend once told me that this kitchen tool is one reason to get married; it at least has to be the number one item that brides (and some grooms) put on their registry. It's an expensive item, and probably not one that many people receive as a gift. The last guy I dated had one, and I really took it as a sign that things were going to last - he knew how to cook and appreciated well made gadgets. Alas, that was not the case, so maybe I should take the stand mixer off its pedestal. I don't have room for it anyway.


The at home seltzer maker: A couple of my friends have one of these, and it's just a brilliant idea. I love seltzer, but don't buy it often since bottles quickly lose their fizz. The Europeans (or at least the Irish) were way ahead of us on this invention. When I was younger and my family took a vacation to Ireland, one of my parents' friends had one of these, and I've wanted one ever since (that was 1985). Fresh seltzer all the time. You can also carbonate anything - imagine fizzy coffee...luckily, this item doesn't take up much counter space.

Now if only Apple and Verizon would work things out, I'd finally have an iPhone. I may need to look into the HTC Incredible or the Google Nexus One.