The dish on the compote

I was watching a rerun of one of my favorite TV programs the other day, "The Dick Van Dyke Show", and I noticed that Rob and Laura had a compote dish on their coffee table. The were having coffee with their neighbor, Jerry Helper. Since then I've noticed the same compote in other episodes.

The Petrie's coffee table compote.

They use it as a candy dish I believe.

I should say I'm a huge fan of compotes. The somehow seem a little more special than just an ordinary bowl; it's something about raising the contents up on a pedestal that elevates the mundane to a higher level.
So I should point out that I have one on my "dining room" table (well, it's more like a dining niche), but all the same, it's appointed with a little dark green compote dish that I brought back from a trip to Thailand.

My compote dish that sits on my dining table.

They make a lot of pottery there and compotes are very common. You see them a lot in altars devoted to Buddha, laden oftentimes with oranges and lemons. I do the same. Nothing like a nice bowl of lemons to brighten up a table I say.

Lemons in a bowl are Oprah's favorite decorating tip; Google it!

The obelisk

There are several little 'pocket parks' along Sutton Place South. The one that's at the southern most end is called 'Sutton Place Park'. It's very narrow, a small, almost triangular smidgen of greenery and benches. It's a teensy bit too close to the FDR highway and the traffic noise it causes for my taste ( I much prefer the little park across the street from my building), but any respite from this city's steel and concrete should be appreciated. The one thing I do like about this tiny place is that it boasts a lovely focal point, a decorative obelisk. It's a circular globe and sundial. At the base it has some inset stonework indicated north, south, east, and west. And around the circumference the signs of the zodiac are featured in gold detail. Very nice.

You can see the FDR and it's signage very close to the left

A detail of the zodiac emblems 

I'm partial to Sagittarius ;o)

On the street where I live

I ran across this old photo recently online.
It's a very early picture of the apartment building that sits across the street from my building.
It was built in 1926 (mine was erected in 1938), so it's fascinating to see the lower right hand corner of this picture because that's where my building sits today. That vacant lot (?) would later become the corner of my building!

Secret compartments

When I was a kid I loved movies and TV shows where people lived in homes that had secret rooms and passageways. You know what I'm talking about, bookcases or walls that swiveled around and opened onto secret hallways, rooms, or laboratories if you pushed a special button...maybe it was a detail on the mantel or if you depressed a certain book on the bookshelf.
This was played for laughs in "Young Frankenstein".



And for chills when Bela Legosi was Dracula.



One of the biggest tropes was the ol' wall-safe-behind-the-painting gag. How many times did you see that? But it was still cool.



I was very spooked by the mausoleum in "Dark Shadows" that was the tomb of the scary vampire Barnabas Collins. You would pull the ring on a wall detail of a lion's head and it would reveal a secret room. Here's an episode where two nosy kids got trapped in there.




Of course, my favorite secret compartment of them all was on the old "Batman" TV show. In Bruce Wayne's booklined library in his "stately Wayne manor" mansion there was a bust of Shakespeare.





If you pulled back William's head it would reveal a special knob when, if turned, would make a shelf of books move aside to reveal two 'batpoles' that would descend our hero (and his "youthful ward", Dick Grayson) down to their crimefighting lair, The Batcave. I was in kid imagination HEAVEN for this.



At the time my sister deduced that they would cut to the animated title sequence "to give them time to change into their superhero costumes". Ah, naivete!
Anyway, you might be wondering what all these fond pop culture memories have to do with The Beautiful Wreck. Well, my little abode has it's own secret places built into it too! Not only do I have one secret compartment, I have two.
Now, make no mistake, mine are not nearly on the scale of Bruce Wayne's...but I love them all the same for being there.
The first one is in the kitchen...and I lived in the apartment a good two months before I discovered it on my own. Underneath the shelves by the kitchen window there is some paneling.



I thought it was just decorative, but in actuality the paneling is...



two tiny doors that open to reveal a little bit of storage space. Right now there's some leftover materials in there from the contractor I have to dispose of. Maybe I can store an exotic stash of rare cooking spices there? Or some fine priceless crystal? (As if I had money for that!)

The second secret place is even more fascinating.
It's in the bathroom. There needed to be cut-off valves in there for the hot and cold water lines. My architect and contractor thought that having them exposed would be an eyesore. So they devised a clever solution. Along the bottom of the marble tiles against one wall...



there's a secret panel that when opened, reveals the valves and a little bit of interior wall space.
Cool, right?





It's four tiles connected from the back by a piece of jigsawed wood; it's held in place with two sets of magnets.
Maybe I can hide my extremely valuable stamp and coin collections in there...or the family heirloom jewels.
Yeah, right.

Tick tock goes the clock

I'll admit it, I can waste a lot of time in the shower. Especially my new shower with the spa-like marble tiles that go up onto the ceiling and the big rain shower overhead. It's a treat. Before I know it,  20 minutes will have gone by in a flash, it feels that good.
So that I don't lose track of time it's important for me to have a clock in the bathroom, easily seen from behind the shower door. It helps to keep things moving along in the mornings when you've got to get out the door in a hurry.
So I've been looking and looking for the right clock. Just like my search for the dining table, I exhausted every website I could think of for just the right timekeeper. It couldn't be too big, nor too small...it had to, of course, look cool, but it also had to be practical as a readable clock.
Then I found one I love...one with an all over brass design that worked perfectly with all the aged brass/bronze fixtures in the bathroom. It's big enough to see from the shower too. It was a mini-splurge but well worth it. It's one of those things that you use everyday and can't do without. And it's handsome to boot, what could be better?
Here are a few pics:

Matches the suspended vanity light and the medicine chest...

...and the sink fixtures.

Clean, simple, modern...just like the bathroom itself

Lemon water

I stopped drinking soda water a few years ago. Same with juices. I figured I didn't need all that sugar.  I switched to seltzer waters for a while but I decided even then I could do without the expense. Now all I drink when I'm at home is lemon water. Straight tap water with a wedge of lemon. It's a very healthy practice. You can read more about it here.

The benefits of lemon water are MANY

Now, we're lucky in NYC, we have great tasting (and clean) tap water, some have even called it "the champagne of tap waters". So my habit is to always have a fresh lemon at the ready that I can cut on whenever I want a drink. I keep it on a small cutting board, a 'bar board', in the kitchen. I've had several rectangular boards over the years but then one day I was watching the old movie "The Boys in the Band" and noticed that the lead character, Michael,  had a cute circular one in his kitchen, there's a very quick sequence when he pulls a lemon from the fridge and cuts it on the board in preparation for a cocktail party he's giving. Here's a few screen grabs of that scene:

"The Boys in the Band": Michael grabbing a lemon from the fridge

His friend Donald hands Michael the round bar board

Michael cuts the lemon

The circular board on the counter next to Donald

A close-up (a bit fuzzy)

I decided I would make my own circular bar board just like the one in the movie. I'm pretty handy with a jigsaw and I have a full handyman's work station in the basement of my house out on Long Island. This wasn't going to be just a plain ol' board though. No, this one was going to do the movie version one better, it would be up on little wooden 'feet' and it would have a handle too. And it had to be a specific size to fit on the marble shelf in front of the kitchen window. If you're familiar with a brand of hot sauce named Cholula, you know that the cap is round and wooden, just the perfect thing for the feet (yes, I keep a stash of saved ones for craft projects, they're too nice to throw out!).

The caps on Cholula bottles are wooden, great for crafts!

All I had to do was cut out the board from a piece of pine and screw in the little feet underneath with some wood screws and--ta daa!--a perfect little place to cut lemons. I designed the handle to be circular too, it also functions as a place to rest a little ramekin to collect the lemon seeds before you squeeze the wedge into your drink. Here's the finished piece, I think it came out great.

The finished board

Overhead shot

From underneath you can see the 'feet' screwed in

On the shelf in the kitchen window

With the ramekin in place to catch the seeds

The Apple of my eye

The saga of my TV has finally come to a very happy ending.
I've been able to watch DVD's on my BluRay player for a few weeks now, and at last I was able to hook up my AppleTV box this week.
I bought it on sale a few weeks ago at RadioShack and me being me, I procrastinated hooking it up mainly because I DREAD dealing with anything electronical. I'd rather eat ground glass.
So there it sat in the bag in the cabinet until I got the wherewithal to try to figure it out.
Now, I know that Apple as a rule makes their products extremely easy to initiate and use, but I was still apprehensive. My fears came true.
I learned that the AppleTV black box needed to be plugged directly into the TV itself. "But I have a flatscreen television mounted on the wall," I said to myself..."how is that gonna work?" Precisely.
It wasn't. Ugh. Now what to do?



My friend Doug gave me the solution: he suggested getting two large black Command picture hanging strips (my FAVORITE product of all time, btw) and attach the box to the wall behind the TV. The box is not that deep and therefore wouldn't "pooch out" the TV too much. It turned out perfectly.



I was all set to go...so when I plugged in the box with the HDMI cable you can imagine my chagrin when NOTHING HAPPENED. The screen stayed black. "Oh, Lord. Here we go again" I thought. "This is why I hate electronics."
So a few days went by where I didn't even want to think about it. Then I was telling my friend Rick about the problem and he said "Why don't you go on YouTube and see if there's a tutorial video on how to hook it up." He was right. There were many videos. I watched the very first one and right away I figured out the problem: I HADN'T PLUGGED IN THE BOX WITH THE ELECTRICAL CORD. Lol. Who knew that at the bottom of the container box was another black cord hidden by a cardboard sleeve? And who knew that I'd be such a dummy to not realize the contraption needs power to run??
So sure enough, once the power cord was in place, voila!, the AppleTV screen flashed on!! Amazing! Whew! I spent a few minutes maneuvering around the screen with the little remote provided and learned it was, of course, true to Apple fashion, super easy to use. I downloaded the YouTube and Hulu apps right away, and now I've been watching programs for the last two days. "The Twilight Zone", "The Brady Bunch", "I Love Lucy", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "Gillagan's Island", "Lost in Space", "The Beverly Hillbillies" and on and on and on, so many great shows, so many hours of entertainment to come! What more could you ask for? And the best part is that it's only $7.99 a month, NOT $100 like cable! That's music to my ears.



So all's well that ends well with The Odyssey of Ron's Televison Woes. Thank God.

(And)irons in the fire

One thing keeps The Beautiful Wreck from being 100% perfect: the fireplace is non-working :(
Oh, it worked once upon a time, when the building was first built in 1938 (I found the original floorplans on the internet and my apartment's fireplace was indicated as "WBF"--Wood Burning Fireplace),  but who knows when it was closed up over the years. See, in many pre-War buildings like mine, apartments get combined, especially studio apartments, they're easy to add on to other larger apartments to make them even bigger. And many times the fireplace is the casualty. I know other fireplaces still work in this building, I've been in those apartments, but alas, not mine. I have to be content with my lovely marble mantel.
But I can--and have--appointed it with logs and andirons to give the look of a real working hearth. It's still enchanting to look at and a nice focal point for that part of the room.
A couple of years ago my friend Jan gave me a nice set of metal andirons for my last apartment as a housewarming gift. They're very heavy with handsome ballheads, rusted just the right amount. I chose real birch logs to sit on top of them. Birch is the prettiest type of log for this purpose I think. I found them online...seems like you can find anything on the web if you look hard enough!

Shrinking the eyesore

So one of the things that's bugged me immensely since I moved in back in December is the house phone intercom in the entryway. It's big. It's ugly. And it looks like the 1970s...in a bad way. I love the 70s...the movies, the music, the theatre...but NOT not in my apartment when it's the tacky plastic cheeseball look of that era.
At first, I was told by my Super that I was getting a whole new updated model. Hooray. But then we found out that it actually works. So now it stays.
I did have one brainstorm: the metal plate that surrounds it could be painted I thought. The same gray as the wall behind it. This would minimize it a bit and streamline it down to just the phone receiver in its cradle. It was something, anything to disguise it a bit more.  I sanded down the plate, primed it, and painted it...voila! The visual blight was a little less noticeable. To me anyway. And isn't that who really matters?

Here's how it looked before the paint job:







And here it is decreased in "size"...better i think: