My Shirt, Macy's & Monsters in the Subway

Yesterday Daya had to come into Manhattan after school for an appointment in the evening.  She was to come to my office. As soon as school was out I got a notification of a power outage in the subway and all the trains were down. 3 lines down and one line rerouted.

Which would make it hard to get to Manhattan by train.
I told Daya about it but she went to the station anyhow and got on the train, which she said was moving.  Not only was it moving but it was also going to Manhattan.

It was not until later I discovered the actual reason for the train moving:

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So Daya arrived to the office with no difficulty.  We were talking about homework I think and I suddenly realized she was wearing MY SHIRT.  I thought something wasn't right in the morning but I couldn't place it.....I said "Didn't you know it's not yours?" 

She replied "Yes I knew it wasn't mine but I didn't know whose it was."

There are only two of us..................so that shouldn't be too hard...........

                                    

We had time to kill after work and before the appointment so we went to ride the wooden escalators at Macy's.  They are old and loud and wonderful.

                                    

We found a set of cool utensils (we did not get them):

                                     

I made Daya pose for a picture by the holiday train.  The last time she was up there was the year we went to see Santa at Macy's...I have to look up how old she was... 7 maybe? ....an experience I'm glad she had as it is classic but it also took about 5 hours.

                         


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On the way home Daya told me she figured something out about three weeks ago.

There is an emergency call button on some of the trains, depending on the model.
The label looks like this:

When she was three years old she thought it was a monster.
Look at the black negative space.  It kind of does look like a monster.

THREE WEEKS AGO she said she finally saw the person pressing the button for the first time and realized it isn't supposed to be a picture of a monster.

For the past NINE YEARS she has been avoiding sitting next to this sticker!
(straight A honors student and all that...)

I think she might still be a little bit scared of it.

Dark Dust

I got a new set of pastels.

Rembrandt makes a set of darks!  I didn't know this until recently.....

So I waited and thought about them a lot, waited some more, and found them for an AMAZING price on eBAY.

I did have to get one open stock- due to a manufacturing error the violet was missing and I had 2 red violets.  Easily fixed.

Darks are very important with pastels because dark values are so important and you don't want to use black for everything.  You can optically mix pastels but having a good range of darks is important.

I have the set of Sennelier darks but they are much softer then Rembrandts, which are a medium-soft workhorse pastel- good for under and middle layers.  This is an extremely useful set and I love it.

Arabesque

Here's Daya's First Arabesque photo she needs for a few auditions. :)

SAB

Daya had the first of her auditions for summer dance programs.
I do have a backup in place in case she doesn't get in anywhere, but honestly I think that is unlikely.

Last night we went over to Lincoln Center for her School of American Ballet audition.
It was nice being over there, and Daya got to say hello to LaGuardia, where she wants to go to high school (along with the rest of the city..)

Daya needs more audition experience; she doesn't really have any.

The audition was 45 minutes and Daya said it went well.  Megan Fairchild ran the audition, which Daya was excited about because she loves her.  I didn't know the NYCB principals ran auditions.

Here are some cool warm-up pictures:

We'll know in a week if she gets in.

She has another audition this Sunday and two more next month.

New Years

Rob came over for New Years and we had New Years Nachos and potato pancakes with applesauce.

We were baffled at why people would go stand in Times Square in subzero temps..... we watched the ball drop and went to sleep.

It was a lovely evening.....maybe boring my most standards but that's fine with me.

My intentions are of course to drink a lot of tea and paint some pictures. And finish the workbook in A Course in Miracles.


It is so cold outside and will stay supercold all week.
I like the cold but this is extreme, even for me.