Steve's blog

I was walking the dogs down an unfamiliar street this morning when I saw four old row houses, obviously constructed by the same builder. What caught my eye were the wrought iron doors under the front stoop, accessible by three steps down. One of the doors was open so I could see that the stairs continued down to the basement level. Nothing interesting there except that the doors are only about 30 inches high. Is it possible the architect specified a 30" door and this is what the builder gave him?

I've been collecting these shots for a while for an "I Meant To Do That" column. Except I can't really add to them as they need no commentary.

It's midsummer so it's back to Betsy's cabana at Breezy Point Surf Club in the Rockaways for another run at the Guinness Book record for the world's longest-running hangover.



This is like my fifth or sixth visit to Breezy. I wrote about another party last year. As always, I came armed with sangria: three gallons of red and two gallons of white. I'm not too modest to say that it's always a big hit, and of course a major ingredient of my hangover. I'll post the recipe below.

The rule-of-thumb is that tomato plants double in size every ten to fourteen days. With the sun, torrential rains and warm evenings we've had here in Brooklyn, plus my magic elixir of Miracle Gro, epson salts and fish emulsion, these plants made the mark.



This year, I'm growing mostly heirloom varieties with bizarre names like "Mortgage Lifter" and "Black Zebra". The grower I got them through wrote some appetizing prose about each variety but kinda missed on the specifics. For instance, I didn't know if I was planting any cherry tomatoes until the first fruit appeared and I deduced that "Sugar Nugget" must be a cherry tomato. Just in case, I planted a Sweet 100 cherry from the local nursery too.

I was chatting with a neighbor yesterday, consoling him for the lack of progress he complains he's made with his house. He discovered my blog last month and couldn't understand how I got so much done with my house, especially insofar as he's lived here almost as long as me.

He assumed it had to be my prior construction experience, my shop and the fact that I didn't have kids. All are true, especially the kids part. I've only got two dogs and I know how much free time they consume every day: an hour at the dog run in the morning, 45 minutes of miscellaneous walking, 20 minutes of feeding, an hour of play time at night. That's three hours out of the day where I could be hammering holes in the walls. Kids? Fuggedaboudit!

Still, he missed it. The #1 reason is because I telecommute. Total up how much time you spend every work day getting cleaned up and transporting your body X miles to your job -- in many cases only to sit in front of a terminal logged into the same server you could have accessed from home.