The Upright Citizens Brigade

I've mentioned I had family in town last week so let me tell you a little about my aunt Carla. Carla visits us here in NYC every 6 months. I kid you not. She first came up just a couple months after we moved here and since then she comes every spring and fall. Every time she visits, she has a list of places she wants to go, including tourist spots, restaurants, and half the time it's places JP and I have never even heard of. This time, I was able to take the entire week off from work, which gave us a ton of time to tackle her list.

Every time she comes, she plans a secret thing for us to do and doesn't tell us about it until she gets here. Once it was Accomplice, a walking tour/scavenger hunt/theatre show, though I can't tell you too much about it or I might get in trouble (for example, once you buy your tickets, you don't know where you're supposed to go until you get a voicemail telling you - and it ends by saying you must delete it immediately). Another time, it was taking a sailboat around Manhattan. So this time it was a night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre!

We saw the show Death by Roo Roo: Your F'ed Up Family. For those who might not be familiar with this theatre, it's an improv and sketch comedy spot. It was started by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh in 1999 - it not only has shows, but it also has a training center for people who want to train in improv and sketch comedy. The show was saw had two parts - in the first half, they talked to someone in the audience to hear about their totally f'ed up family. Unfortunately, the volunteer we saw SUCKED. He was weird and none of his stories were f'ed up and the guys in the show just made fun of him to his face. Then the improv bit they did based on his family also just sort of made fun of the guy most of the time - they were hilarious! It was great to see that even with a crappy volunteer, they could put on a great show. The second half of the show was them making up an entire scene for 30 minutes based solely on a word given by an audience member. It was equally funny and we had a great time.

I highly recommend this and any of their other shows!

A Mug Addition for a Mug Addiction - Unicorn Tapestry

I recently visited The Cloisters where they have a Search for the Unicorn Exhibit. Anyone who knows me knows I love unicorns and I've always loved the Unicorn in Captivity tapestry - I have a print of it hanging in my apartment. I'd never been to see it in real life, however, and I must say it was very impressive. I'd never thought about how big it actually is and it was so neat to be able to see the silver gilded thread woven through it. I wish I could have it, but they refuse to sell it to me (maybe because I could only offer about $10 - they refuse to haggle like they do in Chinatown). I did, however, buy a mug depicting the unicorn from the tapestry, which I'm absolutely in love with, so the day was still a success!

Also, for the record, I got to see a narwhal horn up close at the same exhibit. Apparently, during the Middle Ages when hunts for unicorns were popular, they didn't know what a narwhal was, so if their horns washed up on shore, then everyone would assume it had belonged to a unicorn. Anyone who knows me knows that not only do I love unicorns, but I also love whales, and narwhals are the unicorns of the sea so...this exhibit was very exciting for me.

A real narwhal horn!

The Unicorn in Captivity tapestry

We're Moving!

Big announcement!

For the past 3 years we've lived in the little apartment we found in Queens. It's a little off the beaten path, which we liked at first, but as we got used to living in the city and realized just how long our commute to work is, our apartment became less and less ideal. We've loved the quiet neighborhood with its trees and courtyards, but we've hated the 14-block journey to the subway and the unreliable Q23 bus (seriously, it has to be one of the worst bus lines in the city). So last year we decided to try and find a place in the city. Or at the very least, a place in Queens or Brooklyn that was right next to a subway station. 

Well, we were having a hard time finding one that we could afford, but then my dear friend Harper told me her two roommates were moving out of her amazing prewar Harlem apartment and she would need roommates starting in August. For a lot of people, a married couple living with roommates is strange, but in NYC it's the norm. In fact, I know of some couples with babies who have roommates. It's just the affordable way to do things here and I'm so excited about it!

So stay tuned for more about our move and I'll also be blogging about all the places I visited around the city this past week - I had family in town so I took off from work and had a bit of a stay-cation. I can't wait to tell you all about it!