Friday, January 7, 2011

Snow Blankets


This post is dedicated to an avid reader who has recently celebrated a birthday AND is powering through rehabilitation after his knee replacement surgery. As my belated gift to you, grandpa, this post brings the blog up to (drum roll please)... TODAY!

Now back to September.

The play I directed at Manhattan Rep was called Chinatown is Full of Rooms. A dark look at relationships and how we hurt ourselves, the play packed a lot into one act (and managed to pack the house most nights). I loved sinking my teeth into the near-poetic language, especially equipped with the stellar cast we put together. We had some issues with the venue (ie, them keeping all the profits, trying to insist we use an air mattress, etc.), but the team made up for it. We even got a nice little review on a blog. We also partnered with a local bar called The Hourglass Tavern, which allowed us to have an opening night party there - replete with show-themed drinks!

This past fall also saw a lot of visitors swing through our new Brooklyn home. My cousin Sara and her boyfriend Michael bought the awesome Jet Blue "All You Can Jet" passes, and used one of their flights to come check out the Big Apple. The plan was to check out the baking scene in as many city as possible, since Sara has started her own baking business after going to culinary school. Read about their NYC journey on their Jetsetters blog... and then continue to read, because it's a great blog!

Aidan's sister Taylor also visited us for a weekend (before leaving to spend six months in Patagonia!), and gave me an excuse to check out the amazing "Big Bambu" installation on the roof of the Met - otherworldly! Then a week later Rachel and my parents came out too. It was great showing the family around the new neighborhood, especially with all the gorgeous fall foliage. Brooklyn Heights also goes all out when it comes to Halloween decorations; Stoops were filled with giant pumpkins, ghoulish gravestones, and enough webbing to encase a fleet of toddlers. But the night of Halloween found us very far from home - in Queens, in fact. Dressed in the most horrifying of New York costumes (a bedbug and a bedbug victim), Aidan and I made our way out to Astoria to my friend (and former roommate) Stephanie's house, where she had put together a wild haunted house party. Spooky appetizers, dry ice, great costumes... and oh yeah, fire spinners.

Steph knows how to throw a party.

After Halloween, the rest of the year just flew by. Aidan and I had our own mini-Thanksgiving with lots of friends (and TONS of stuffing), and then flew home to be with our families. Following tradition, the Bisker women ran the Flying Feather Four Miler again, despite the miserable drizzle outside. But we also got some news: Someone made an offer on the house! It'd been on the market since Spring, and Mom and Dad were definitely getting anxious to get into a new place. Not that there was anything wrong with it; It was a great house for the twenty years we were there, and a wonderful neighborhood to grow up in. But with Rachel and I officially out of the nest, they were ready to start the next chapter. And after a few counter offers - they did. In fact, just this past Monday they officially closed on the new place. A very exciting start to 2011!

Of course, that meant A LOT of packing between Thanksgiving and January. Before I knew it, I was back home again for Christmas, enjoying such time-honored holiday traditions as cookie baking and visiting with family ... and the not-so-traditional cleaning out the basement, running things up to storage, and filling up the dumpster parked in the driveway. But of course, we managed to have a lot of fun with it, discovering all sorts of fun things during the process. I also became quite the Craigslist seller, posting everything from old TVs to my dad's 70's record player. We met the most interesting people through it; The college student who was just getting into vinyl, the boy who was using his Christmas money to buy his very own ping pong table. A very cool experience.

As it turns out, I spent more time at home than I had anticipated, thanks to the NYC blizzard. Between canceled flights and standbys, I was at Port Columbus for the better part of the week - NOT my idea of a good time. But it did allow me to catch up with some friends while I was home, so it all worked out okay.

And though the snow was still thick when I got back to New York, that didn't stop our New Year's celebration. We rang in 2011 with a raucous party in our apartment and then drank champagne on the roof while watching fireworks over the Hudson. A pretty good start to the year, I think.

But it wasn't long before our apartment was again filled with visitors. This time it was my sister and two of her friends, checking out different neighborhoods and seeing how they liked the feel of NY life (the picture is us walking through a snowy Fort Tyron park). Our cozy one bedroom bulged a little at the seams, but held everyone in the end. We also had some Michigan friends stay this past weekend while they attended a music festival, and then had a small birthday celebration for me last night with cake and euchre!

And 2011 is just kicking off... Many more adventures to come!

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