June, 2014

The June Roundup

Sunday, June 1st

People in NYC adopt the tree beds...

...and then come up with innovative ways to discourage excessive dog-peeing (which can sometimes kill young trees!).

Tree-killer!

A bunch of (Sycamore?) trees down the street are sick and their bark is peeling off.

Where the bark is peeling away you can see the underlying wavy wood.

Flower I liked. It's funny to see that I still take lots of photos but now I take them of plants instead of boobs.

Monday, June 2nd

Still lots of mac and cheese photos, though.

Wednesday, June 4th

I do not enjoy doing dishes or mopping, but if something needs to be vacuumed and / or steam-vacuumed, holy shit I am your guy.

Thursday, June 5th

On Thursday afternoon I went down to a start-up incubator...

These are the things that yelled my name when I walked into my corner bodega.

...to advise a college team working on a start-up idea.

jane anne, maddy — Hung out with Jane.

Friday, June 6th

Was vigorously mixing some protein powder in a mason jar and apparently I got too vigorous.

10 grams of chocolate protein on the floor.

Saturday, June 7th

hans, matt — On Saturday Matt and I met up with Hans and Ellen...

ellen, me — ...for a St Marks feastin.

I usually can't roll with the day time drinking (I need a nap!), but this day the peach Belini said wassup.

Smoke trees blooming.

Haters gonna hate, but I loved this book. Haunting, dreamy novel about a financial scam-artist from London who gets discovered and takes the money he's stolen to hide out in the casinos of Macau trying to turn his dwindling hundreds of thousands into millions. The Ballad of a Small Player

ellen, hans, matt — Later that night we reconvened at Matt's to attempt to watch Game of Thrones and not slip into a food coma after Hans came rolling in with FOUR DIFFERENT KINDS of homemade empanadas.

Monday, June 9th

On Monday I had the day off. I smoked a weed called SHADOW DANCER and spend the day waking around the park...

...making friends with all the plants.

Alligator / Flamingo park on the walk home.

Spent the evening playing guitar and recording hot licks in Garageband.

Wednesday, June 11th

Lunch with the Big G on Wed.

Then I biked over to Chinatown to meet up with Davo's friend Jenny and a bunch of her friends. We got bubble teas and then walked over to Magic Jewelry for some Auracam6000 polaroids. (I'm all the way on the right)

Wednesday, June 11th

Friday, June 13th

Saturday, June 14th

Sunday, June 15th

dad, me — On Sunday I went out to NJ to visit my family and celebrate Father's Day. Happy Father's Day, Brian Sr!

Sunday, June 15th

aunt elaine, liam c — Got to see little baby Liam all grown up with a head of hair!

liam c — Was fun to watch Liam run around the place with Uncle Wayne...

dad, uncle wayne — ...and tire him out nice and quick.

Happy father's day, John!

Great, almost-full moon.

Sunday, June 15th

Had Monday off and spent a bunch of it reading this.

Tuesday, June 17th

On Tuesday I started an eight-week consulting engagement with SingplePlatform.

Loooong time since someone's given me a dedicated desk!

Wednesday, June 18th

Thursday, June 19th

On Thursday afternoon, I went out to NJ with Rachael as her weekend date...

...to her sister Casey's wedding! I've known Casey since she was eight years old so it was great to get to attend the rehearsal dinner with Rachael and feel like family.

Rachael and I stayed up late talking and partying. Wine and gambling...

...quickly gave way to other favorite vices including tobacco, weed & treats.

Shadow chairs conspired to hide our seats.

Posing with dat millstone, son.

Oh, you know just the pre-bedtime push up contest....GOOOO.

Peaceful country evening!

Friday, June 20th

I had some time to kill alone while Rachael did Maid of Honor-y things before the wedding. Despite the signage for the nearby Land of Make Believe...

trail — ...I opted to drive over to the nearby Jenny Jump State Forest.

trail — I always take pics of the posted trail maps before setting off on a hike so I'll have a reference copy on my camera.

Off we go!

Is it me or is this sign a little confusing?

Don't worry guys, I checked the sign. Hunting hikers is definitely fine here.

After a nice walk through the woods, I found myself with an outstanding view.

Spent a long time hanging out on this rock...

...watching the birds fly around on thermals.

Ever since learning about phyllotaxis, I've been obsessed with each plant's unique radial geometry that can be observed from the "sun's viewpoint."

I'm not very good with computer programming, but I took these photos of plants thinking about how it would be cool to try to write a computer program that could use some kind of edge-detection aglorithm to trace the lines of the leaf edges and calculate the angles that the plant-branches grow from the stems in order to generate some kind of unique "plant fingerprint."

It's neat to see that even plants that are similar in structure...

...have obvious visual differences that should be able to be quantified mathematically. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take a photo of any plant and the program could tell you the species of plant?

Sort of like Shazam but for flora & fauna!

Looking at the extreme differences in tree-bark patterns, I'll bet it would be easy to use the same principle to identify trees. This tree has such different math...

...than this tree. I'll bet you could probably just use some kind of "roughness index."

The very rare toilet bowl tree. Do NOT reach your hand in there, sir!

Found this big boulder and decided to set up my camera with the shutter on auto-timer and see if I could run over....

...and climb up on top of the rock in time. Haha.

My tender dork-in-the-woods activities must've been sensed by this pretty fawn who strolled out of the woods...

...and walked right up to me for a closer look. (It's exciting when a deer walks up to you, but a little unnerving when you realize there are also...

...other kinds of animals around that you may accidentally stroll up on.

The asymmetrical and displeasing bark of the...

...the Homo Idiotus tree.

An hour or so later, I came out of the woods and the trail divided a lillypad-filled lake!

At first I thought the name of this lake was the Cold Water Kills...

...but it turned out to be a sign discouraging me from jumping in the water alone, because, you know, cold water can kill.

So neat to see a lake almost completely overtaken by lillypads.

Overlapping leaves on the water.

Nelumbo lutea

Sat here for a while just admiring the view. Just past the lake off the trail...

...was a campsite and baseball lined with creepy trailers.

Summer school.

This rock struck me as handsome.

This one was no slouch either.

A little after 3pm, I drove back...

...just in time to catch a glimpse of Casey in her bridin' outfit!

Tom walking Casey...

...towards the ceremony!

Rachael coming into the reception.

Mr & Mrs. Bell! Congrats Andy & Casey!

Father of the bridge toast!

Then Rachael was up as Maid of Honor!

casey c — Dance floor shots.

emily, tim — It was nice to see Emily & Tim.

me, rachael — Worked up a sheen on the dance floor.

As Casey & Andy prepared to leave the reception....

...everyone lined up and lit giant sparklers...

...in order to light their walk!

It was gorgeous.

Congrats, Casey & Andy!

Bad news about that other shoe.

emily, rachael — Sparkly Rachael & Emily

Cousin selfie.

We stayed up late drinking at the after-party in the restaurant next door.

Saturday, June 21st

Sunday, June 22nd

grant — On Sunday I met up with Grant by Tompkins and got a serious brunch on.

Egg Shakshuka, OMFG.

On walk home stopped to admire some kind of religious parade going by.

Passing through the park, I spotted this envelope...

...taped to a bench. For Elle Had to Go.

Tuesday, June 24th

brett, grant — My brother and his friend Sid were both in New York visiting on Tuesday. After pre-gaming at my apartment...

me, sid — ...we walked down to An Choi to meet up with Grant and DECIMATE delicious bowls of Vietnamese food.

Thursday, June 26th

Hit Gruppo with Jane Anne on Thursday. Arugula salad there is great.

Toasted ciabatta bread with pecorino cheese, fresh strawberries, fresh basil and white truffle honey. Yes.

Hit Sunny & Annie deli on the way home because they have an excellent ice cream selection. Told Jane Anne to pick out a flavor...

...and sat back to watch her settle in and assess the myriad of options.

Natural laptop habitat.

Friday, June 27th

On Friday evening I biked down to Grant's apartment - hey, new rug!

We got spiffed up and headed out over to...

...Carla's nearby housewarming party!

I ended up getting REALLY drunk.

Drinkity-drink drunk.

We decided to head out at 1am to find a place to dance.

Soho shenanigans.

Saturday, June 28th

Spent Saturday recovering from Friday and by the time the evening rolled around...

jared, jeet, meredith — ...Mer, J-rod and Gurj came over for Tiny's Giant Sandwiches and a mega-hang!

Sunday, June 29th

Spent my Sunday with the perfect trifecta of weirdo activities. Practiced the Sanskrit alphabet in the morning...

...wrote some tunes...

...then spent the afternoon reading about how chakras (which are not physical structures) correlate to different organs & nerve ganglia in the physicial body.

There are three subtle-energy channels that connect the chakras and one, over time, can learn to become aware of the energy in each chakra and learn to circulate it throughout the body.

This is the hidden meaning encoded in symbols like the Tree of Life and the cadaceus, also known as the staff of Hermes Trismegustus, which in the US has accidentally become confused with the Rod of Asciepius.