Rob's Blog

A weekday in New York City

Now that I'm retired I can actually hang out during the week! Although the city traffic does not make for a pleasant experience. Other than that, I had a great afternoon in with my cousin Suzanne Laberge Great find for lunch, "Delicatessen" on Prince and Lafayette. Then I saw her "hotel", which basically looked (and sounded, according to Suzanne) like a flophouse. In fact it pretty much IS a flophouse! The rooms were the size of a spacious bathroom with latticed ceilings which made for a lot of unwanted verbal intimacy with fellow guests. Finally found Yonah Schimmel on Houston and 2nd Ave. http://www.knishery.com/main.htm, the best and, probably oldest, Knish place in the city. Hadn't been there in years. What a treat!

 

Studio 12 - Church St. Montclair, NJ

Every Wednesday night, Greg Spinelli and his wife Cheryl run an open mic at 12 Church St., Montclair, NJ., upstairs from what USED to be the Market restaruant. This just in: Greg and Cheryl have now opened a new restaurant downstairs, "Tapastry",  featuring, no not Carol King, but tapas, and really good ones! Anyway, last Wedesday I "flipcamed" the action upstairs, featuring, among others,  Meg Beattie Patrick, Carl Croce, Greg Spinelli, Zach Halper (yes relation) and Carrie Cantor. Drop by and check it out live sometime.

 

Where I have been. What I have eaten.

I've not blogged in a while, very busy at work, including conferences, travelling, etc. Paris, Nashville, New Orleans. In Paris I spoke at the Marketing 2.0 Conference  about the jnjhealth channel on You Tube, which has now registerd over 4-million views. In April I was in New Orleans for Mom 2.0, where we interviewed Moms about "using social media for social good". We'd done the same thing in Nashville at Blissdom. Looking back on my photos, there has been a consistent theme. Eating and drinking a lot! As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand calories.

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas. We had a bi-denominational one - cooked a goose for dinner (Christian) and went to see a movie (Jewish). After walking out on overrated "It's Complicated", we ended up seeing "Up in the AIr", which was fantastic, and had a great soundtrack to boot. Actually, it was tri-denominational. On Christmas Eve, I played guitar with a chorus as the Unitarian Church, pretty interesting for an atheist leaning agnostic! Just finished reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". It was just ok, despite it being on the bestseller list. I thought the writing was kind of stilted. I liked "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" more. Starting "Living on the Black", a portrait of two major league pitchers, Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, who "live on the black", or the edges of the plate. The office is pretty much shut down, so it's nice to have enforced down time. May venture into NYC to see the windows, maybe see a play. I wish everyone happy holidays and a great New Year.

In Search of the Perfect Quilt

Or, searching for Intercourse in Pennsylvania. Yes, there really is such a town in the Pennsylavania Amish country, southwest of Blue Ball and north of Paradise. What's with these names?! Anyway, it was a struggle to get there - every main road in Pennsylania seemed to be under construction, turning an already long 3-hour drive into a 4 1/2 hour one. I'm officially avoiding that state. Anyway, my wife and I finally got to Intercourse (really), and looked for quilts there, and in nearby Ronks. Linda was on a mission to replace our very worn out one, circa 1930, and was having a really hard time. None of them "spoke" to her, and they seemed either uninspired or overpriced, or both. My suggestion to just buy a blanket and be done with it didn't do much to help. Finally, looking through a local paper, we found some out of the way places, that were private residences/farms. These quilts were much nicer and much more reasonable than the ones we saw in town. So, if you want to save yourselves some time, we'd recommend Country Lane Quilts, 221 South Groffdale Road, in Leola, PA (where we bought ours) and Esh's Handmade Quilts on Route 340 1 mile east of Intercouse. (Is that like East of Eden?) The one place in town that was pretty good was Village Quilts, in Intercourse. It was really late by the time we finished our sojourn, and headed towards Lancaster for dinner. We had no idea where to go, but wandered around the town and made a great find. A really nice restaurant called The Press Room, complete with jazz trio. Good food and drink after a long day. We finished at 10, and with minimal traffic and avoiding the nightmare roads we took getting there, it still took us 3 hours to get home. Oh, and the quilt. It's beautiful!

This is IT! (Wedding ring pattern)

Our little town

The Press Room, Lancaster, PA

Winemaking at Chez Ray

Click to Play

Ray Jordan, the sole proprietor of Chez Ray Wines, Westport, CT, graciously invited Bob Griffiths and myself to help him and son Eric, press 13 large containers of fermented grapes. Though Bob compared our escapade to Tom Sawyer's manipulations to get his fence whitewashed, we actually all had a great time. Of course we had to sample the "free run" (the juice that comes out of the grape/yeast mixture right before the pressing), which helped make the day even more pleasant. Thanks to Karen for the great lunch!

Formats available: Windows Media (.wmv), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: wine, winemaking, chez ray, grapes, pressing, alcohol

Church St. Cafe

12 Church St. Montclair, NJ

Marc Walsh, Tony, Greg Spinelli (owner) and me.

I'm lucky enough to be involved in a music jam that takes place every Thursday (or so) at the Church St. Cafe in Montclair, NJ. The owner, Greg, keeps it pretty loose and a wide variety of people play there. You'll hear anything from Joni Mitchell, to the Band, to the Dead, to blues and other eclectic music. Here's something I did, playing bass, with singer/guitarist Carrie Cantor a couple of weeks ago.

Morning Morgantown (Joni Mitchell)  (MP3)