Day 215

Day 218 – A FreshDirect brunch

Our farewell brunch at Poco on 3^rd Street and Avenue B was delicious, but unpleasantly eventful…

Unpleasant Event #1

As soon as we sat down at a table outside (the weather was beautiful), a FreshDirect truck parked right next to us. Of course, they cannot switch off the engine because it operates the AC to keep the food fresh (hence the name) inside the truck. It was annoyingly loud. We asked them nicely to re-park, but they were complete a-holes and didn't give our request a second thought. They were parked illegally on a hydrant right under the No Standing sign by the way. After 45 minutes of this background music we called 311 and reported them. Unfortunately, the police never came, and the truck finally left after about an hour of idling loudly in our ears…

Unpleasant Event #2

Zhenya ordered eggs Benedict and they were delicious, however, after she finished eating and was leisurely leaning on the table – her glance wandering around and fixing for a moment on her empty plate – oh horror! – she noticed a GRILLED FLY masking as a burnt piece of bacon fat on the rim of her dish!!! She was devastated (understandably so), mainly because she was afraid that she could have eaten other grilled flies in the heat of the brunching moment. We complained, of course, and the price of her food was naturally taken off our bill. The psychological damage remained though…

Day 217 – The New Year’s Clue

Javier left at 6AM and I went back to sleep after seeing him off, waking up only at noon, which promised to screw up my entire day, because I felt like the day after New Year's celebration. I sat in total comatose on my couch wearing pajamas, staring at the TV yet somehow past its screen, unable to understand what time of day it is, pondering the futility of plans and resolutions. The only thing missing to complete the New Year's analogy was a tableful of leftover salads.

There is a bright side to the day after New Year's though – all your friends feel equally aimless on this day, so you all get together and wander around with the sole purpose of parking your behind in some comfortable spot to watch some good old movie (at least, this is the Russian routine). Fortunately, my vibes must have been fairly strong, as they attracted Dima, Tanya and Ronit to wander aimlessly around the city with me and eventually into my apartment for some sitting around prior to watching a great old movie, Clue.

Yet again, life is beautiful, and my fake New Year's resolution is "to have more of these relaxing aimless days in my life".

Day 216 – Sail around Manhattan

It's beautiful. Everybody should do it. I cannot believe I have never done it before.

• http://www.sail-nyc.com/
  
• http://www.mustseenewyork.com/boat-tours.html

Day 214 – One fraud claim + one couch warranty + one medical insurance bill = two complete lottery failures

During my travels I accumulated several problems that I had to deal with back in New York:

1. Capital One couldn't figure out how to compensate me for the thousand bucks stolen from my credit card on a Bloomingdale's purchase somewhere in Florida. For some reason it was absolutely impossible for them to email or fax a fraud claim for me to fill out – apparently, these important papers can only be mailed to you. They also have what they call a "grace period of the claim", 60 days within which you have to file it, otherwise you can forget about any reimbursement. Of course, I came home approximately 90 days after my credit card was compromised. The kicker to this annoying situation is that the claim was never sent to my home address anyway, although I requested it at least three times during my multiple remote attempts to straighten things out. Interestingly enough, none of those attempts were "in the bank's system", whatever that means. So I went to the bank to deal with this crap in person. One hour later, utterly frustrated by our most useless conversation – "Mam, this is impossible that the papers haven't been sent to you" – "But I didn't get them" – "But it's impossible" – "But I still didn't get them" – "But that's impossible", – I finally managed to make them file the claim through their system. Right away I started mourning the loss of this thousand stolen dollars, so confident the lady at the bank was when she sympathetically said to me, "I am really sorry it has happened to you, but we can only put the facts in the claim and the facts are it has now been 90 days since the money was spent and we have no record of any of your calls anyway, so I'm fairly sure your claim will be denied". Brilliant…
   
   
2. I got a phone call from my dermatologist's office informing me that my insurance didn't cover my last visit and I owe them $1,500. Reason "unknown". Now I have to call the stupid insurance, figure out what went wrong and try to convince them to pay a bill that was supposed to have been paid almost a year ago. Great…
   
   
3. Seven years ago I got the best couch on this planet at Macy's. It came with the best warranty invention also: you can spill anything on it – food, wine, blood, candle wax, a bucket of paint – they guarantee cleaning it, and if they fail, they replace the damaged part and/or the entire couch. This goodness is extended for seven years. Of course, over the years some stuff has been spilled in the direction of the couch, nothing major, but since my super-warranty expires in October, I decided to file a claim for replacing the cushion covers. It was back in January. For the past 7 months we have been conversing regularly with the warranty department on the subject of them not having the sales receipt from the original purchase. From my part, I did everything I could to get the stupid sales receipt to them: first I faxed it – no luck, they couldn't read it, fair enough because after 7 years it did fade quite a bit; then I mailed it (regular mail) – they "didn't receive it"; so I mailed it again (priority mail now) – they "didn't receive it", although I did get a notification from the post office that it had been delivered. This exchange started to become quite ridiculous and since the damage to my beloved couch was truly minor, I decided to give up on this endeavor and just let the warranty expire without taking any advantage of it. A sad waste of time…
   

I hate being on hold and resolving the above would involve a lot of holding time, so I kept postponing the calls… until one day when I decided to finally plunge into the first round of battling the system. I had no doubt that there would be multiple rounds to the process. But – OH MIRACLE! – every call was a complete success: the stolen money has just been returned to my account, the dermatologist's unpaid bill suddenly got paid, and the funniest of them all, Macy's decided to replace the entire couch (that didn't happen though because they don't have the same model anymore, so I settled for… a lump sum payment of $400!). What unbelievable streak of luck! I just had to buy a lottery ticket immediately!

And what a sore disappointment: out of 30 numbers on the ticket I didn't even guess ONE correctly! What kind of luck is that??? Out of sheer desperation I bought another ticket, and – struck of genius! – filled it out with… THE SAME numbers in each of the five rows. I must have thought that asserting the numbers in every row should somehow entice the luck fairy take my side. No comment…

Day 211 - Plane ocean

Yesterday was our "meat snacks night at the beach" (this is our loving nick-name for the Korean BBQ that Ellen cooks up for us). The night was just perfect: no wind, a clearest sky with no moon and a myriad of stars at first and then a bright red crescent appearing on the horizon and slowly turning into an orange marmalade slice as it was climbing up, Jupiter's casting a path of bright light on the ocean's surface (by the way, it surprised me to realize that in English there seems to be no special word defining this phenomenon; in Russian, for example, such a path cast by the moon is called moon path, in Spanish it's camino de plata - silver way)… In between snacking on the delicious fire-grilled morsels of Korean-style marinated meat, we played with fireworks (a somewhat illegal activity in North Carolina, yet you hear this distinct blasting sounds all the time from all directions here), sat around the fire chatting or just walked on the beach.

I came very close to the ocean and stood still for several minutes with my eyes closed. I took in the awe-inspiring splendor of the ocean at night. I listened to the roar of waves. I thought, "You can enjoy this sound literally forever, it's the most soothing sound on earth…" It was so peaceful and beautiful… All of a sudden I realized though that the sound of breaking waves is exactly the same as the sound of an airplane taking off. And I know for a fact that if I were standing next to the airport hearing to this same roar, I would be annoyed by it beyond belief. Go figure…

Days 209-213 – OBX – Food is mood OR It is what it is…

For some people food is merely fuel. Without noticing any taste, they relocate the content of their plates into their mouths, thus starting the processes of ingestion and digestion, raising glucose level, releasing insulin, secreting intrinsic factor, and that is that.

For me, food is art. Food is social interaction. Food is struggle and victory, sadness and joy, boredom and fun. Food is mood. Usually, good mood.

That is why the week of our annual food fest in OBX is so special to me. Last year, Ellen and Alex invited a group of friends (12 people altogether) to rent a house in North Carolina for a week's vacation. Our diverse team is an excellent combo of amazing chefs and avid foodies, and somewhere between a home-made pizza night and a Korean BBQ beach outing it became clear that this gourmet event was paving the way for an annual tradition.

The week's cooking schedule and approximate menu get approved before the trip. We bring our essential cooking equipment from home to ensure that the absence of special knives or blenders does not get in the way of executing our original food ideas. First thing we do on arrival is shopping, a team effort that usually takes several hours (especially when some smart pants among us insist on self check-out of our 1000-dollar worth groceries).

Of course, other fun activities happen during this trip. This time, for example, Michael and Dima got scuba-certified by Javier (hurray! now we can all dive in Cozumel, hopefully, soon!). We go to the beach during the day to swim and during the night to watch the million stars that we forgot about in the fog of the city.
But our days revolve around meals and at any time of the day (and sometimes night) you can see someone in the kitchen, chopping, boiling, stirring, kneading… Logically, the memento of the trip is… the menu:

Dinner Menu

Saturday:
Lunch (on the road) - Old Mill crab house
Dinner (on location) – Mac & cheese
Sunday: Tamales by Diana

Monday: Korean BBQ by Ellen at the beach and oysters by Dima, Michael and Javier ("bought by" that isJ)
Tuesday: Four different kinds of pizza by Dave (shrimp and artichoke, sausage, deep dish, mozzarella and basil)

Wednesday: Ellen's amazing seafood soup (that we had to eat for breakfast due to… see below)

Our breakfast spread always included freshly baked bread and some kind of yummy omelet and lunch – Bubba burgers and hotdogs made by Alex and Simon, the masters of the grill.

Argh! Our trip got cut short due to the stupid hurricane Earl!!! We were supposed to stay till Saturday, but had to evacuate on Wednesday! Unbelievable! The problem was all the food that we had left and all the goodness that didn't get to be cooked, including but not limited to slow-cooked Mexican style pork stew and grilled marinated pork shoulder. THIS was the real disaster.

Of course, the stupid hurricane died away by Thursday night, which means we didn't really have to leave… Oh well, it is what it is…