70 x 3 = Park

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I'm going to get my butt outside as much as possible.

They have predicted three days in a row with 70 degrees as the high. Not only is that amazing for March, but if you consider that  last weekend consisted of a Nor'easter that took out power in NJ and NY, as well as flooding and destroying a huge portion of the shore, (and my personal pain of having a sinus infection) I am going to make an extra effort to make this weekend not suck.

To that effect I shall be sitting in Riverside Park with a book as soon as I can get down there. But I will do so sensibly, after slathering myself in sunblock. St. Patrick's Day may have come and gone for another year, but my skin remains Irish.
My husband mocks me all the time as to how delicate my skin is. To which I reply that not all of us can be blessed w/ rough hides covered in freckles. This, however, is just yet another reason I wish I had some Italian blood in me. Freckle-then-burn for 2 weeks-to-a month before tanning is just NOT a fun way to live.

I grew up sailing, and later became a sailing instructor, and I was always a lobster for the first two weeks. 45 waterproof means nothing to my skin. Especially if a life-jacket has been able to rub at my shoulders.  I remember one parent actually turned open-mouthed to look at me the first day of the Summer, because I was so pale. He did not understand how it was possible to be that pale. Then again, he lived down the shore all year round and had that perma-tan and accompanying squint.
Well, Mr. Chance, all I can say is I'm still winter-pale as ever, but I just turned 30 and I don't have crows feet yet. So there!

Another sun-related anomaly I do not understand is the removal of sunglasses. Personally, I wear them year-round because I have very sensitive eyes (along with the skin. You'd never know I grew up a tomboy to look at me now.) But I'm not getting at general wearing. I don't know if it happens as much in real life as it does in the movies, but why do people remove their sunglasses to see someone better in the middle of the day?
You know the scene I'm talking about. Person stops, looks more closely, and then lifts their sunglasses off their face and says recognized-person's name inquiringly. It has NEVER made sense to me. Surely you are wearing your shades because it is bright out, and they assist you in being able to see without glare or squinting. (Or in my case, slightly less glare and squinting.) So doesn't it follow that if you remove your sunglasses while trying to recognize a person, they would become HARDER to see?
I don't get it.
I'm sticking with my book and my shades are staying on.

*end note - while sitting on this bench, a very small child, sitting in an interesting contraption on the front of her daddy's bicycle, pointed at me and said, "Mommy" as they rode by. Oh my, no, little one. Not even close.

Pomme Frites and Other Little Belgian Things I Love

It was not a fluke!

Last night I prepared duck breasts for dinner again, using the method I wrote down in a previous post, and it came out perfectly again! Yay! Yay for consistency and not being full of sh*t.

Another thing I learned in the East Village last night:
No matter how interesting and chipotle or sun-dried-tomato filled your mayo is, it REMAINS MAYONNAISE and therefor should not be considered an appropriate dipping sauce for your piping hot Pomme Frites. I must remember this and not break down when I see the giant board full of interesting-sounding sauces and panic trying to decide before it's our turn in line and think the first bite is super yummy and then realize I basically have a plastic cup of mayo in my hand.
Deezguzting.
The fries themselves, however, are delish. And stayed hot all the way to the 8th street R stop on a chilly night, so extra points for that. But I just have to come to terms with the fact that I am now, and always will be, a fries-with-ketchup girl.

What can I say? I'm a Classic.

No other Saturday Fun to report on tho... just sucky grownup stuff like cleaning the humidifiers, and checking out pawn shops in search of my stolen jewelry, and checking our health insurance policy to figure out how the hell to cover the cost of the lab work that essentially said I was a walking coronary... stuff like that.

Maybe for a treat Mike and I will hit the local library and see if I can't find some more old Hercule Poirot mysteries. There is one perk to having a terribly memory. No matter how many times I watch a Hercule Poirot mystery on TV, I (almost) never remember whodunnit. The little villages are all similar, and the actors are frequently recycled, or I know them from other period pieces (say, a Miss Marple), and so I confuse one story with another and so don't remember who the killer is. Or if I do, I don't remember the how, and so I can enjoy Poirot's little ego-trip at the end in which he explains all :) So no matter what book I find at the library, I probably won't remember how it ends because I don't pay attention to the names when watching, just faces. Plus, either way, I enjoy watching (or envisioning) David Suchet as Papa Poirot.

THAT is a point I feel strongly about.
I very much like Peter Ustinov as an actor, and he will always be close to my heart as the voice of the cowardly Prince John in the animated Robin Hood, but he just is not Hercule Poirot. He had the good fortune to portray Poirot in two fantastic, star-studded movies: Evil Under the Sun (my fav) and Death on the Nile (Maggie Smith is in both as well. If you have not seen them, Netflix them. Classics.) and apparently even a few TV mysteries in the 80's... but he is not the exacting little Belgian. Wonderful to watch, yes. Fit Agatha Christie's description of Hercule Poirot, not quite.
And I don't even want to THINK about the growling, hunched-over Albert Finney performance in Murder on the Orient Express... good grief. He looks and acts more like Hitler with a Hernia than Hercule.
(shrugging that off...)

<--- Papa Poirot says "Non"

David Suchet has really mastered the look, persona, and mannerisms of Hercule Poirot, and I delight in watching his performances. (He is also a fabulous actor in general, who pulls off whatever ethnicity is thrown at him. Look him up.)

And I keep hearing whispers of remaking Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet (not just in video game form, please...) so I REALLY hope that comes off. Hell, they can even re-cast Lauren Bacall and Sean Connery from the Albert Finney one. Probably not as the same characters tho...

Well, IMDB certainly got a workout from me this morning. And now I must attend to the aforementioned sucky grownup stuff.
Tomorrow: Teriyaki Hanger Steak! (And I guess the Oscars)

Note From The Future: They DID remake "Murder On the Orient Express" with David Suchet, and it showed on Masterpiece Mystery in July of 2010, so if you're a fan, I'm sure you can look it up!