Cement paving or something on my block in the middle of the night last month (11/6/10)

Reminds me of one of my favorite Annie Lennox songs, Pavement Cracks, which was actually playing in my Chase branch the other day.

Sent by Jason Lader from Los Angeles, CA.

Waiting for the bus somewhere on Fifth Ave, there was this strong sweet smell of rotting leaves.  It was nice.  I can smell it now, looking at these photos.

But, it reminded me that a few days earlier my brother and I were walking down Fifth and smelled a stronger tree smell, bordering on nauseous.  He said he had heard about a certain tree species whose smell has been bothering its neighbors.

After some googling, here is the culprit:
Female Ginkgo Biloba Trees a.k.a. Maidenhair Tree
(I didn’t know trees had genders!)

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/how-is-a-ginkgo-tree-like-a-discarded-computer/

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/11/19/queens-residents-want-smelly-trees-removed/

Somewhere in NYC, I forget exactly where.

From one of my favorite Craigslist “for sale” postings on The Upper East Side:

Click on screenshot below to see entire Craigslist posting.

I forgot about Mr. Peanut but looking at him now I think he’s pretty cool!  Also, his name is Mr. Peanut.  Not some cheesy pun on peanut, but just what he is!  Like if an almond company’s character was called Mr. Almond or if Oreck had Mr. Vacuum Cleaner…Mr. Fan, Mr. Mattress, etc.

(Thanks to Teddy for the screenshot.  My 12″ Powerbook G4 is not big enough!)

I have too many blogs.  I think I will soon integrate my Pigeon blog and Vanity Plate blog with this one.  And I am going to write about whatever I want to write about.  Trying to keep each blog so narrowly focused has been holding me up from posting anything at all.  So, here goes again.  Also!

WordPress Troubleshooting:

I get so much web help by searching and finding what other people have posted on blogs and in forums, so just in case anyone has the same problem…

I recently switched the hosting of this site from ICDSoft to GoDaddy. I had to re-upload all of this site’s wordpress files and the wordpress mysql database to GoDaddy and once I had done that, uesjournal.com was just a blank white page!  And the same was true for any posts or pages – any of the parts of the site the public is supposed to be able to see.

For a week I thought it had something to do with accessing the mysql database since I was able to log in to the wp-admin but all of the public pages were blank.  But, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the config.php file.  So!

Today, I was just browsing around in the wp-admin area, frustrated, and clicked on the Theme Editor on the Appearance menu.  I got an error message (I should have written it down!) that basically said, theme not found.

It turned out that all my posts were up there in the database, but they could not be laid out for anyone to see because I had accidentally not uploaded the theme I was currently using.  So, I uploaded it and voila!  The site is back.

I should have known it wasn’t the database because usually when there is a problem with that you get a message that says something like “error establishing database connection.”

That’s it.

This summer, I was walking up Fifth Avenue past 66th Street and happened to gaze up at one of those bronze memorial statues scattered throughout the city.  It was mostly backlit and hard to see and so at first my eye only caught a glimpse of one area which stopped me- the anguished facial expression of a charging soldier- the third soldier from the right.  I looked longer at all the characters and the movement and realized that this statue is quite horrifying- in a way that makes me want to research it further so I can better appreciate what it is represents.  So…

This bronze statue, The 107th Infrantry Memorial, memorializes foot soldiers from the 107th Infrantry, a New York National Guard Regiment of volunteers which, during World War 1 suffered 1,918 casualties including 580 killed.  The statue’s designer, Karl Illava, (1896-1954) served in the 107th, himself, as a sergeant.

The 107th Infantry Regiment has an interesting New York history.  The 107th was actually known as the 7th Infantry Regiment until World War 1 when it was strengthened by transfers from other New York regiments.  Since the Civil War the 7th Infantry Regiment had sometimes been referred to as the Silk Stocking Regiment because a large proportion of its members were young men from elite Manhattan society including members of the Vanderbilt and Roosevelt families. More on 107th Infantry Memorial on Fifth Avenue

I think this cat lives at New York News on Madison Ave between 90th and 91st Streets but here he/she is getting some attention in that new cupcake place, Eleni’s.  Photos taken October 13, 2010.

I was walking around the Upper East Side yesterday with my friend David (my cohort from A Very U.E.S. Night) and we decided to walk into the Duane Reade on 2nd Avenue and 79th Street to see if there was an “As Seen on TV” section which they have at the DR near my house.

There was not an “As Seen on TV” section but we came across this:

Some bright store manager or employee has created this convenient grouping of products, perfect for that point in the night when hopes are at their highest.  If you had just left Dorrian’s to pick up some beers and move the party elsewhere and you walked into this aisle, how could you not believe it was your destiny right then to play drinking games followed by drunk sex?

Just to be sure this wasn’t some scheme following a memo sent down from “corporate” we stopped into another Duane Reade a few blocks away.  After all, DR has just undergone a comprehensive rebranding.  But the beer stood alone and I am fairly certain this display was the result of the humor (lighthearted or disdainful, will we ever know?) of an employee or employees at a single location.