February, 2007:

Last night it snowed like the dickens, and snow means that my home owner duties are calling. What it means that I have to get up at the crack of Oh Dark Thirty to shovel. Sadly, that snow doesn’t shovel itself.

The good news is that unlike the Valentine’s Day Snow-(which was a hateful, awful day– there wasn’t any ice, it snowed at night, and it didnt continue to snow) Today’s snow was in fact perfect for shoveling– thick, and light, and a little wet. Easy to shovel. I almost didn’t mind the fact that we’ve got so much frontage cover (we live on a corner, so that means that I’ve got to do both sides of the house, plus the long driveway area. And don’t forget the front door walkway and the back door walkway. Basically a lot of shovelling.

I have a method… I cut the areas into smaller areas– I do the backdoor out to the sidewalk, and then do the sidewalk towards the driveway, but stop at the driveway. Then I go back and do the rest of the sidewalk to the end of the street. Then I do the side of the house (actually the front) Then I do the front stairs. Then I salt everything, because now I’m tired. And then I do the driveway last of all, because I need more salt in the garage which is next to the driveway. So the last thing I do is salt, and then I go inside and take a shower. Because after that I am VERY smelly!

Okay, it’s a little anal, and it’s a little programmed. but hey, whatever gets you through the shovelling.

After the shovelling today outside, I decided to do some shovelling inside, and went through the mounds of papers that have been sitting around my desk in boxes. I really did some good hard paper throwing out today. Threw out two huge bags of shredded paper, and reduced 5 big unorganized boxes to 4 smaller boxes a little more organized. Tomorrow, I do more organizing and filing. I’m trying to get this stupid paper under control. If only there were some kind of salt that I could put on all of the paper that I have and it would just dissolve.

So Stephanie was gone this past week (in California at a conference and visiting her brother, sister-in-law, and their baby boy B). So I had the house all to myself. Well, almost.

You see there is this cat… Joey… that is Stephanie’s best beloved. And not mine so much. We vie for Stephanie’s affection. In some ways (and of course this is ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous because it’s so true– in some ways he is my rival. The enemy. And now, he and I were alone.

Joey and I had a bit of a stand off. He would miaow like crazy and I would shush him. He miaowed more so I fed him. He miaowed some more, and so I petted him. He miaowed some more, so I locked him in the basement. At least I couldn’t hear him miaow.

Actually, Joey was pretty good for the most part– except he is constantly underfoot, which presented a little bit of a problem, when I decided that the boxes of furniture that have been sitting in the dining room slowly accumulating stuff on top of them had to go. That’s when I went on a FURNITURE BUILDING FRENZY!

On one of my trips back from Providence before New Year’s, I ended up purchasing these two pieces of furniture on sale at Target. It was the Shabby Chic Armoire and three door chest. Stephanie called me, and said that it was a DIRE imperative that I get these now. So I did, lugging them into the house (these incredibly unwieldy and very heavy boxes that really are supposed to have two people carrying them. They are for our (eventual) master bath, which had lately become a repository of boxes and all sorts of other crap.

On Saturday, I watched an episode of Clean Sweep, and realized that I had to build these pieces of furniture immediately– that the boxes in the bathroom could exist NO MORE. So I took these two heavy boxes of Target furniture that we bought, opened them up, transported them piece by piece up the stairs (the boxes were far too heavy and bulky to lift up the stairs by myself) and started building.

For the most part they were easy to do– the directions were all wordless, with very welldrawn pictures. I had a couple of moments where I did the wrong thing, or couldn’t quite figure it out, but careful thinking, and a minimal amount of banging my head against a hard surface fixed that.

Each of the pieces took me about 4 hours to build. And considering that the armoire had 11 steps, and over 100 screws, that’s not that bad. And the fact that I attached the bottom part of the armoire to the top part backwards, and had to redo it.

I threw out a bunch of boxes, opened up some other ones, and brought the rest of the crap that had been hiding in that room upstairs to the third floor. Eventually, we’ll run out of third floor– maybe that will be the time to build a fourth floor?

The three shelf unit, already with a bunch of Stephanie’s stuff obscuring it.

The armoire, carefully hiding our washer/dryer

Stephanie and I have often lamented about the lack of Fresh Direct here in Yonkers (Fresh Direct is a NY based service started by one of the founders of our favorite market Fairway that delivers fresh food to you for not much of a charge. It’s a very convenient way to get food delivered, and the food is very tasty. We had Fresh Direct in Riverdale, and our understanding is that it’s slowly moving to Westchester.

I’m not sure when it happened, but Peapod, which is Stop and Shop’s delivery service, is now serving Yonkers! Which means that we’ve got the opportunity to get stuff delivered to us. And best of all, they have some kind of special deal going on where you get $10 off if you are a new customer. So it’s definitely worth checking out.

I like Stop and Shop (it’s probably the best quality chain market), and they often have very excellent prices and great quality on their meats) So this is great news to me!

I found out about the Peapod recently because I was checking out the affiliate link stuff that Stephanie does. And voila, there was Peapod. I checked it out, and yes– now serving Yonkers!

This is an affiliate link to Peapod– if you end up using their service, Stephanie and I get a little something back. But that’s not the reason to use it– use it because you’ll get $10 off your groceries, and it makes it a lot easier to shop.
Shop Peapod using this link and get $10 in FREE groceries

So rejoice Yonkerites. Fresh Direct isn’t here yet– but in the meantime, Peapod is a really great substitute.

Great article in LoHud regarding a new artist initiative in Yonkers.

Naturally, this is something that I’d like to get involved with.

If you want to get involved, too, the Yonkers Arts Council Committee will meet 5:30 p.m., Feb. 12 at Philipse Manor Hall, 29 Warburton Ave., Yonkers, to continue its discussions. For more information or to RSVP for the meeting e-mail YonkersArts@gmail.com

I hope to see you there!