Heatwave 5k

This morning I woke up at 5am to leave at 6:15am to go with Daya to Governor's Island.

She ran a 5k!

I was not allowed to take Daya's picture.

Daya came in first in her category, Females 15-19!!

She did this race because Nigel (dance) said "build up your endurance".

She trained for only two weeks!

I think these results are pretty impressive!!

Heatwave Sweatpants

Daya needs contact lenses.

This is Thing Two I have been needing to do for her since April.

Dance makes basic life things so difficult to schedule. But she starts dance on Monday and I have .... today... to do this, otherwise it has to wait until September.

(Thing One was a joint bank account so she can have a debit card instead of her old savings account with ATM-only access. I also opened up a joint credit card for us. Mostly I need to get my main credit card off Apple Pay and family sharing, and there's no way to do that without having a payment method on file, since I have subscriptions for cloud storage. And I think it helps her start having a credit history.  The bank person said no, not until she's 18 but when I added her as a signer the phone person said yes because I gave them her ssn.

Welcome to The Machine, kid....... )

************

So, contact lenses.

Daya does NOT have my eye issues thank goodness, but she's got some stuff going on.
Most of her prescription is astigmatism correction. And she wants contacts for dance.

She only uses her glasses now and then, and we aren't even going to fill her new prescription for them.

Daya will be in soft lenses. She has a different prescription in each eye.

Of course none of this is covered by medical insurance.

***********
We went to Costco to get Daya food for net week, when she starts dance all day every day again.

(I think she has Sundays off?)

It is 89/feels like 94 out and my child is wearing Actual Sweatpants.

I got exactly one thing for me at Costco, more of these...I love them:

*********

My friend Catherine (whose daughter is also a rising senior at LaGuardia (drama) and lives in our neighborhood) was also out at Costco and we met up.  Daya went home with the cart of groceries.

I walked with Catherine back to her home across the neighborhood, then I walked back home through the neighborhood to places I used to go every day but rarely go these days.

Like Daya's old preschool, which is still there but looks different, a little more overgrown.
I think it is still in business though.

The same playground stuff is still in the yard.  It has been there since before she started preschool when she was 3.

I walked on our old daily route when she was a toddler going to preschool before I went to work.  It's crazy how time passes.

I also went by the playground at Daya's first elementary school.  She learned to ride her bike there, and also played there since she was 1 year old.

One day I hope Daya will walk through the neighborhood and feel a sense of home, having grown up in the neighborhood and having the places of her childhood still there for her when she is an adult.

She doesn't really like it now, she wants to live in Manhattan like her fancy rich dance friends.

But our neighborhood is still a Very Good Neighborhood and I like it here.

Heatwave Cats

My cats hold up better than I do during heatwaves.

Pebbles greatly prefers when we are home, and she literally guards the front door.  

I need to get a picture of it.

Synchronized torties don't spoon in the heat but they stay close together.

Furball and her band-aid toe!

Pebbles helps me work.

Isis likes being up there too, and she jumped up hoping Pebbles would move, which she did not.

Isis sulked to me about it.

Pebbles finally moved to a more inconvenient location.

Heatwave Tuesday

August is starting with a heatwave.
(of course it is)

So I went to the office today, and Daya came with me.

She's running a 5k on Governor's Island this Saturday, and she went over there quickly to check out the route.

I wanted to show Daya the office too.  She's been in every single place I have worked since she was born.

We were going to go to the boathouse after work but we both felt really tired and sluggish, so we went home instead.

I slept for an hour first thing after getting home.

August is so ugh.

Statue of Liberty view:

At Least Pre-August is Over

 First thing this morning I texted Carey, "It's August again."

She hates it just as much as I do.

Carey said "At least Pre-August is over."

July is totally pre-August.

Ugh.

******
I found Isis taking a nap like this.

A Day Out

Kedrin's friend Dennis visited from LA.
I spent the day with both of them.

We went to the Met but I got there first, so I sent this picture to Kedrin to make sure she felt spied on.

Dennis has never been to The Met before.

We took him around.

I also brought Rebel (my Canon DSLR) out with her macro lens, but those pictures are still on the memory card and I'm too lazy to get them for this post.

We went up to the roof garden.

Dennis and I had 2 cocktails on the roof.
The Met makes pretty fantastic overpriced cocktails! 

They do not skimp.

Obligatory visit to my Memling.

Neither Dennis nor I had coins to make wishes but Kedrin did, so she financed our desires.
I think a train ran over this quarter.

After The Met we went to Carmines for stuffed artichokes and eggplant parm.
Carmine's has the best eggplant parm in the whole world.

This was enough for the three of us, and Kedrin took some home.

(Carmine's is family style)

I haven't been out like this for a long time.  

It was a nice day, a little spendy, but I guess it's good to do that sometimes.

Besides, tomorrow is Terrible August so I need to prepare.

86 Degree Fleece & I think I Know Why I can't Paint

I am absolutely shocked that I made the 11:20 ferry over to Governor's Island today.

Because I overslept and woke up at 9!

Kedrin and I worked the desk and had fun with our visitors.

There were fantastic clouds on the island.

It was 86 degrees out today.

I need to do laundry, because clothing that gets wet from the Hudson River absolutely cannot be re-worn, although I made a one-time exception with my volunteer shirt today.

So all my regular boathouse/summer leggings are in the laundry.

I found another clean pair and got dressed quickly.

The day was hot but I was ok until mid-afternoon when I went for a restroom break.

And I discovered the clean leggings I was wearing were actually my fleece-lined ones.

No wonder they were still clean.

After that I felt about 10 degrees hotter than I did before this knowledge, and it was rather brutal.

I do not recommend wearing fleece-lined leggings in 86 degree weather.

***********

I had a nice chat with my art-friend Janet (from the Reuters art group) tonight.

Now I think I know why I can't paint.

It's stress about my website and prints and... basically taking things to the next stage... which I have no clue how to do.

I'm stressed about the prints I have had done, one is still not right and I'm feeling very overwhelmed.
And while the printer I'm using is also the same printer that several of my friends use and love, I'm having a rocky start. She changed the exposure on my file on the second version and it's too light.  She thought my file would print too dark and it's too light and I can't compare my version with what hers was because she only printed the one she changed.

I want to work well with her, I think maybe I'm going through that beginner initial period and I know she's good at what she does but I have to pay for all the mistakes. I need to get it right on my end.

I think she might have a bit of a quirky personality which takes some getting used to.  I can somewhat understand this because I know I can come across the same way unintentionally... 

Janet has gone through the initial prints from the ground up, I have a better knowledge of photography and editing than she did when she started, but I still need to learn some stuff. nd I had to bite the cost and get a colorimeter for my monitor.

My second print on Topiary Cats: Fearless was SO CLOSE, the color was good but it was to light and I'm just frustrated the printer made changes to make it lighter and it is too light. And she printed wothout borders despite very obvious specific instructions to print with borders.... and if I was being confusing (remember I'm new to this) she didnt ask clarifying questions.

So I'm stressed and annoyed.

I also STILL have not done anything with my intro year of FASO FROM JANUARY.

Website and printing, it's stressing me right the heck out.

Janet is going throug these things too, although she hired someone to build her website whereas I built mine.

But I need to start an e-commerce option and I'm overwhelmed and stressed.

I think this is why I can't paint, because thinking about it goes directly to these related stressors.
And my brainpower to process new info is at a bare minimum these days.

Ugh.

Sunset at Pier 26

I love going to the boathouse, it's one of the nicest things that has come into my life.

It's really good to have somewhere fun to go where there are friends and nice people.

I enjoy the volunteering, the work, and learning new things.

Friday nights the boathouse is open for volunteers only.

We didn't do a trip today, it was a strange low-energy kind of evening.

So we just stayed in the embayment and then sat on the "porch" to watch for passing dogs and watch the sunset.

And eat pretzels.

We are, after all, an eating organization with a kayak disorder.

The sunset was pretty tonight... much better in-person than what a photo can capture.