Catching up on Netflix: Dexter, Avatar: The Last Airbender....and Paul Blart Mall Cop

It occurred to me recently that I wasn't doing very well on my DVD watching.  Austin reminded me, however, that we had been watching up a storm on Netflix Instant Watching.  So I just took it upon myself to find out the DVD equivalent of what we've been watching and add it to the total.  Yes, it's fudging a bit, but basically the underlying goal is get what we are paying for, so it counts!

We're on the second season of Dexter which is brilliant and addictive and provocative.  I just found out that the third season is not available instantly, so we will definitely be back on track with physical DVDs once we are there.  We've watched 7 DVDs so far on this one.

Another that we've been watching whenever Dexter isn't on is Avatar: The Last Airbender.  The movie is coming out on Thursday (!) so we started watching from the beginning to make sure we remembered the whole story and had seen what we needed to see.  We're hoping the movie is just Book 1 (it's a planned trilogy, so it's likely) since that's all we'll get through before the movie.  3 DVDs here.

And finally, Austin has his own queue, so those movies count too! He took it upon himself to watch Paul Blart Mall Cop on the XBox, and that actually brings us right up to 18 DVDs/movies/shows/whatevers total which is right on track for 3/mth.  Now that there is no regular TV on, I have a feeling we'll be more motivated to use our actual DVDs - we've got The Wire and Big Love lined up as well as loads of movies.

Boat Quay, Singapore - A Couple's Project

In my silence, I've actually been moving forward a bit on this list.  This one was a surprise even to me! I'd been keeping my eye out for large puzzles to tackle, trying to balance price with my interest in keeping it around as a momento.

Imagine my surprise when a puzzle made its way to us via mail order.  Austin picked out a puzzle as a present both to support my list item and to do as an inexpensive and fun activity together.  I think we found another couple hobby by accident! It was so much fun to put together the puzzle that we avoided TV (me) and video games (him) more often than not to put it all together.  We'll definitely be doing this one again....

A Place to Rest my Head

At some point after high school, I decided that I would consider myself "arrived" if I had a real honest-to-goodness bed.  I had a lovely bed growing up, but that devolved quickly into the old metal bed frames in college and even a handful of years with the bed on the floor.

My day has come !

Back When We Were Grown Ups by Anne Tyler

In this novel, a middle-aged woman stops for a moment and realizes that she is fairly sure she has become the "wrong woman".  She takes the time to examine her life as a widow with three stepdaughters, one daughter, an aged uncle-in-law, a brother-in-law and several grandchildren all in her care in one way or another.  

The premise intrigued me. I'm a fan of the "what if" novel if and when it is done cleverly.  I can't say that this one was done in a clever way.  It was thoughtful, insightful and enjoyable, but I would say that it was pretty much what might be expected.  A relatively quick read overall. 

Brooklyn Museum

I've been meaning to post on this one for over a week, but alas, time gets away from me.  Just before I started the new job, I made it a point to at least get to the Brooklyn Museum once since it had been on my list for months.

I saw three inspiring exhibits - The Dinner Party which is a permanent installation at the Museum, a Kiki Smith exhibit combining drawing, sculpture, decorative arts and other media, and the American fashion exhibit on loan through the Museum's relationship with the Costume Institute with the Met.  They made me much more excited about art than I had been in a long time and, believe it or not, I found the decorative arts pieces to be perhaps the most interesting. 

Only nine more museum trips to go!

Everything's Coming up Pickles!

I posted another blog post over at the Brooklyn Forager about two different pickle recipes that we've been enjoying lately.  Yum! I haven't been very good at my weekly posts, but I've gotten three posts in the last couple of weeks, so hopefully I'm averaging out over time.

Our Garden Grows in Brooklyn

A few weeks ago, as Austin and I trekked from home improvement store to home improvement store, it occurred to me that the terrace garden was finally becoming the bigger project that both of us had dreamed of previously.  We had taken the time to draw out plans for potter placement in 2009, but threw things together rather quickly in the past two summers. 


This year, we visited several stores and spent much more time selecting our potters and thinking about the sorts of produce we wanted to consume throughout the summer.  Austin is really the gardener, so he did the heavy lifting in terms of researching the needs of each crop, while I mainly thought with my stomach and made requests for things I'd like to have accessible. 


Because of this team approach that we worked out, we also realized that, for the most part, this has become our collective hobby.  That knocks off both #67 and #89.  I'd thought our hobby would be something with set practice times like tennis or something that we would incorporate into our travels like wine tasting or kayaking.  For now, this works out well and may take us on interesting adventures as we pursue urban gardening and farm-to-table dining throughout the city and beyond.