Taking a cue from Margot, I have been listening to music as it's own activity and not while doing other things. Music isn't background noise, but something that should demand our focused attention, at least good music.

Goal is to spend more time actually listening to just music.

As Milt Kahl said, "I'm not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time."

The Shining (1980)

Summer Streets is a program that shuts down stretches of Park Ave to traffic a couple of weekends in the summer. Pretty much from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park. When we went our first year here I was stunned at the amount of people that turned out. It's like people suddenly have a front yard to go play in , and boy do they take advantage of it. Everyone is enjoying being out doors and having freedom to move about outside their 600 sqft apt.

This year Summer Streets features dumpster swimming pools, and they are exactly what their name implies. Also adds a whole new dimension to dumpster diving. If you don't partake in the swimming or the biking it's a great walk because you can walk through mid town and stop and stare at all the gorgeous buildings. It's a particularly nice approach to Grand Central and the Met Life building because your walking towards them straight on then walk either under or around them.

Carla and I are going on a run today to enjoy the fantastic weather and the car free zone. It will actually be my first run in Central Park, which I am very, very excited about. To think me and Nate Archibald will have run in the same park. . .

xoxo, you know you love me

Some people spend hours and hours leveling up in virtual universes.  I prefer to level up in the actual universe. Oh, you have an epic mount? Well I have an epic caffeine buzz, go back to your mother's basement and enjoy your Red Bull. This is my (starbucks) World!

Proof that I am on my way now

Not to be nit picky, but that should read Mr. Jaynes, but we'll work on that while you customize my grande pikes place with hazelnut.


( I know this affects my coffee/tea snobbery, but when you work in a building with a starbucks and they have 50 cent refills snobbery goes out the window. )

I'm happy that this isn't a status on Facebook because the word 'tax' has become a hot button topic--I'll tweet it though. I'll admit that I am not a tax scholar (yet), but I have a curiosity about the topic since I plan to be rich one day, which is why I took notice to The Financial Page in the August 16th New Yorker.

 James Surowiecki writes about the fight on Capital Hill over tax policy. Here is the link and you can read it for yourself (it's a quick read), but I wanted to pull out some of the statistics he sites--please feel free to refute them, but include your references.

• Between 2002-2007 the botton 99% of incomes only grew 1.3% a year, while the top 1% grew 10% a year.
• The top 1% growth accounts for 2/3rds of all income growth in those years.
• The top .1% of income tripled over the same period. 
• The top .1% earn as much as the bottom 20 million. (Need to convert this to either both percent or both actual numbers) *

Surowiecki's point is that the very, very rich are pulling away from the merely very rich and that the current tax bracket doesn't account for that. The way the brackets work now is that anything over 375,000 with a tax rate of 35%. Basically, Lebron James and Lebron James's dentist are taxed at the same rate. Surowiecki writes, " The US is now a place where the rich and the ultra-rich really inhabit different worlds." I don't want to use the word reform here, because I don't have any suggestions, but it makes sense to me that there should be a frank discussion on the tax system,. A good healthy discussion should encourage people to have a better understand of the tax system, not just reactions to raising and lowering them. 

I'll gladly take any recommended readings.

* I tired to research the actual number the .1% represents and I found this: "This 10 percent of the returns in the top 1 percent amounts to only 141,000 tax returns but accounts for nearly 12 percent of the adjusted gross income earned and approximately 20 percent of the nation's federal individual income taxes. "

 http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

"The Big Noise" (1944)

Charlie Chaplin Retrospective in Prospect Park

The Daily Show in Central Park

(Line to get in)

Jon Oliver was delightful--he got heckled by crickets.

Swell Season in Prospect Park

As Jared said, "swoon."

Great article in the NYTimes business section today purchasing happiness: But Will It Make You Happy?

Things I took away from it:

• Move from conspicuous consumption to calculated consumption. 
• You can purchase big things, but putting it off for a while adds to the happiness value.
• Spend on leisure activities and time with friends: Spending money should be on experiences. You can't really compare your experiences with others like you do with cars. Apparently, “A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage."
• You don't have to live a spartan life (100 Item Challenge), but getting rid of somethings isn't a bad idea. 

Aug 9th 2010, New Yorker

Chicken is the predominately featured meat in the Jaynes household, erhm, Apartment. Don't get me wrong, we're not vegetarians or anything. I'd call us flexitarians because I love a good hamburger. The problem with going out to get a hamburger is the sheer size of what is placed in front of you. You wind up leaving the place full of half a cow and self loathing. Luckily, some unsung hero invented the slider.

The slider, depending on your size, is a bite-size hamburger. It's really the perfect solution to the Minetta Hamburger that is the size of your head. We decided to take the Hack-Shack recipe from Serious Eats and Wayne Szalinski'd it down to a bite size morsal. After much experimenting, Serious Eats came up with a comparable recipe for the meat used in the Shack Shake Burgers, which are delicious and reasonably sized. Having just eaten one--friends were in town--I have to say the meat blend is a pretty close approximation. Unfortunatly our apartment doesn't have Abita Rootbeer on tap, which goes a long way to making the Shake Shack experience.

At the risk of becoming one of those food blogs here is the process:

For the meat we went to our awesome butcher and asked him to grind up:
1/2lb of Sirloin
1/4lb of Chuck
1/4lb of Brisket

This is the ratio that serious eats suggests, and it suited us just fine. We formed them into little patties and seasoned them with salt & pepoer, aren't they cute?

We didn't get fancy with the seasoning because we wanted the meat to speak for itself, and it did. The next tricky step was where do we get mini buns? And even if we find them bun quality really makes a hamburger. The ratio of bun to meat is also important. After a little Googling I ran across Martin's Potato Dinner Rolls. Picked some up at Key Food, and tried one on the walk back. Problem solved.

I toasted them quickly on the griddle, and added onions while getting the meat ready.

Then, in lieu of the proper grill, we plopped the patties on a well seasoned, hot griddle.

I cooked mine for 2-3 minutes on each side, then moved them to a slightly cooler area of the griddle--I prefer mine medium-rare. Carla on the other hand likes her's similar to charcoal briquettes. After we burned hers we placed the patties on the buns with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, spinach, and onion.

We had a side of fresh corn too. Shucked, and placed in boiling water for a few minutes.

Don't let the size fool you these little beauties will fill you up! I actually couldn't finish mine, but they fit perfectly in our tupperware for lunch the next day.