Time Out For Fun: Peter Lugers, Rockaway Ferry and My Backyard Project

I just can't stand to throw anything away – unless I'm blessed by a massive hurricane that floods my entire basement to the ceiling and leaves 5 feet of water in my house. I am wiping pics off my phone and what better place to store them than at ednotes?

Peter Luger
Every year we celebrate my wife's cousin's birthday with steaks at Peter Luger in Williamsburg, which by the way is a few blocks from PS 16 where I spent the first 3 years of my teaching career. So Monday night we took the kids out -- well, not exactly kids: two 32 and two 27 year olds -- my wife's 2 cousins, one of their girl friends and my cousin - actually my first cousin's daughter -- a very sharp gal - not a teacher but she has it in her genes to be anti-charter and anti-TFA. OK, start drooling -- and we have leftovers for lunch today.

Happiness is meat

Don't miss the bacon slabs

The backyard
Now we come to my summer/fall project: building and rebuilding a section of my yard that was hit hard by Sandy. We lost 2 wonderful giant evergreen Hanoki Cypress  -- you can see their stumps in the pics -- and replacing them is not an option since I won't be alive to see them grow. So I came up with a different plan, starting with a small trellis and working my way across, spending hours of observation and contemplation planning. Like 6 hours of contemplation and one hour of work. Well, I am pretty much done - at least for this season. I bought some shrubs with some kind of vague plan for finishing in the spring.

See that small deck in the corner? My outdoor man cave where I will be able to smoke and read while hiding from my wife.

OK. So it is astroturf - temp I hope

The man cave- I built around the stump, now a table

Common Core Q: How many trees did I kill to build this?

The view from the man cave

The view from the other deck - my wife's turf- red flowers are Pineapple Sage - an annual fall bloomer - the best ever. Red fountain grass on left

Rockaway Ferry
Finally, some pics we took on the Rockaway ferry to Manhattan, which we took a few times -- $2 each way. It is going to be here until Jan. 15 -- we hope di Blasio keeps it going even if they raise the price. It is used by commuters quite a bit with the A train being so slow. If we could take the subway to Manhattan and get there within an hour I would never drive.

 OK, enough fun -- gotta go out an plant the bulbs. Can't wait to take pics of them in the spring.