After more than a month or so, I finally finished building our living room table. I’m, naturally, very proud of it, and obviously, ridiculously over-protective of what should be a very utilitarian object. I’ve discovered a love for place-mats that never existed in my heart before, and I’m even considering a tablecloth before hosting a house-warming party. The slide to middle age and a keen interest in home furnishings is, it would seem, inexorable.

At a glance, building a table seems like fairly easy work. One gets some wood from Home Depot, attaches some legs, and finds some intelligent way of connecting the two. Turns out though, there’s a few more steps than that involved. First up, the wood has to be sanded, roughly at first, and finely to finish, because no-one wants bits of splintered wood brushing against their arms or mixed into their food as they sit at the table. This, apparently, is an action best performed in the snow.

In addition to lacking resilience to the million dangers faced by a piece of household furniture that now cause me panic attacks when I think of them, a hunk of untreated wood also lacks some aesthetic appeal, and so the next stage is to give it some kind of lacquer. Polyurethane, originally used to coat airplanes in World War II and later the main feature of all-plastic cars that had some brief success in the 60s, is a man-made polymer. It’s robust, abrasion-resistant and lends a rich veneer to any wood it is applied on. Polyurethane suffers badly if overly exposed to UV light, or fire, and therefore is best ‘stored in a vacuum, in darkness, at a low and unvarying temperature‘. Well, quite.

Each coat (four atop, three below) took around 12 hours to dry and had a fantastically pungent smell that has happily dissipated.

This complete, the next job was to find some legs to suit the wood. I wanted a tall table, something at a comfortable height when standing, but which we could also eat off from some high barstools. Table legs over 30-something inches are pretty hard to come by, and stable ones which would support the weight of a table and its users harder again. My first pass was some adjustable desk legs from IKEA but, as you can see below, with some spare wood precariously balanced on a couple to find an ideal height, they were rather ugly and simply wouldn’t do:

So, I scoured the Internet. I failed to find any legs I wanted to buy, but I did come across a shop on Etsy by a craftsman selling custom-built tables with the old Eames-style hairpin legs on them. He fabricated the legs himself so, I asked, could I get some made at the scintillating height of 36″, and could I have them painted just the same shade of orange as my beloved bookcase? Well, he did a few experiments and determined that the legs were likely to be safe, and four weeks later I got a parcel from California within which were my beautiful new legs.

With everything now ready to be finished, I put some girls to work assembling the sweet, adjustable, rotating red barstools I’d gotten for a fraction of their usual cost from the wonderful Overstock.com, and commenced finalising the table.

The body of the table is plywood, which is made of layers (plies) of wood veneer glued together with the grain of adjacent plies at right angles, giving it a high degree of strength and durability. The notion of plywood has been around since Ancient Mesopotamia, but modern plywood was invented by Alfred Nobel’s father in the 19th century. Despite its many benefits, plywood suffers from having fairly ugly edges, where are the separate plies can be easily seen. Fortunately, I discovered a roll of wood veneer which could be wrapped right around the table edges, and with some careful staining, be indistinguishable from the main body of wood.

This had to be fairly painstakingly glued on to the table body, and once stained, had to be trimmed with a straight razor and a trimming knife to remove any remaining impurities and odd edges, but it was worth the work for the final result.

Careful readers will note the legs already attached in the above picture. It was a lot easier to trim those final edges with the table nicely raised off the ground. It took some time, and some fastidious measurements with the legs both off, and in-situ (supported by some canned goods and fruits) before attaching the legs…

…and revelling in the final product.

I’ve kept the straight razors from trimming the edges handy for the first person to spill a drink on my new table.

Xx

I’ve been rather lucky in that my first three New York City apartments were all modern and in pretty good shape when I arrived. The first was a luxury furnished apartment, beautiful until my company stopped paying for it; the second a lovely, freshly-renovated apartment in a relatively new building; and the third a beautiful, spacious converted set of factory offices.

My new home, however, is – par for the course in this older neighbourhood of Park Slope – a little older and rougher around the edges. When we arrived a week ago, one bedroom had horrific green paint on every conceivable surface, even the ceiling light mouldings, and paint was flaking off the walls around old nail marks. Doors were hanging listlessly in their frames and those that weren’t were off-kilter and dragging on something above and below. In this brief week, that’s been rectified, and I’ve found time to tidy up a few other pieces too.

We have a coat rack affixed to the wall, which took some effort, lacking a drill or an electric screwdriver. We have a new toilet seat, a job that surprisingly wasn’t as unpleasant as I imagined. The wonderfully bright orange bookcase (IKEA easy assembly) is a constant reminder of the time my mother offered my teenage self the opportunity to paint my own bedroom walls – I opted for roughly the same shade of orange on two walls, with a slightly tamer yellow on the other oppositional pair.

Whilst occasionally taxing or time consuming, none of this has been particularly challenging, but it has put me in a hands-on frame of mind, and to that end Alex and I eschewed the default of choosing a dining table from IKEA along with the bookcase, and instead headed out to a hardware store to find some lumber. We came across a beautiful piece of red oak, far too large for a table in our modest apartment, but with such a beautiful grain it couldn’t be passed up.

The remainder should serve well for shelving, providing a beautiful bit of consistency in the place, having all been cut from the same bough (as it were). I’m hoping that with some sanding, protection, veneering the edges and getting some legs together the whole effort shouldn’t take more than a weekend, and whilst it probably won’t look as beautiful as a professionally handmade effort, it’ll certainly have some charm, and every meal will be all the more satisfying from being served atop our own handiwork.

Plus, it turns out, this is a pretty cheap way to go. That entire hunk of red oak was a mere $50, and I doubt the whole thing will come to more than $130 or so in total.

Xx

Aiming to beat my current streak of moving house once per year, I’ve left my home in Williamsburg after just 9 months and headed on over to new digs in South Park Slope. The new place is a little smaller and rougher around the edges, but for the $500 I’m saving every month in rent, I can hardly complain about that. Best of all, is that I’m moving in with a great friend – Alex – from last year’s champion kickball team, which means we’ll be able to spend the spring months in intensive training for the new seasons ahead.

Having moved so many times, one would assume I’d be better at it, but at the tender age of 26 I’m still unable to actually get my things into boxes without some female assistance. I did, however, manage to pack up all my belongings in one short evening, and by now I’m an expert at disassembling and reconstructing my IKEA furniture. IKEA, by the way, has been around since the early 40′s, used forced labour in East Germany in the 1980′s and is the world’s third-largest consumer of wood. Who knew?

Packing and corporate scandal aside, this move was made particularly difficult in that I was the one driving the cargo van on the 6 journeys between the rental location, our old houses and the new place. Things didn’t get off to a great start when I turned the ignition key and remembered that the van would be automatic, rather than manual, and looked for the…automatic gear stick? Drive shaft? I have no idea what this thing is called:

…but, glossing over the the gaps in my vocabulary and looking down to my right in the van, I didn’t see any sign of this shifter, and also nothing that resembled a handbrake, just a blank space, which was useful for my guitars, and later a third passenger, but wouldn’t be of much use in driving. The handbrake was, apparently, the leftmost pedal, which I completely avoided lest I confuse it with a clutch. The gearstick/shifter/transmission(?) was above the steering wheel and involved an improbably degree of pushing and raising/lowering that confused me every time I needed to switch between Park, Drive and Reverse, which made parallel parking into the tight spaces even more fun.

These mechanistic problems dealt with, the time came for my first experience driving on New York’s streets. This was also my first time driving anything larger than a car, and the snow and ice on the ground simply added to the challenge.

There were momentary flutters of panic for my passengers as I obviously debated the merits of taking immediate left turns, versus driving halfway through an intersection and taking a longer left turn onto the correct side of the road. My commentary on the ridiculous system of priority at an intersection, where I thought I should clearly have the right of way but was willing to slow down for traffic, was cut quite short by screams of ‘red light!’ — which, in retrospect, I accept as a fair architecture for the road system.

In the end though, all went well and I’m not aware of having caused any collisions, even if I did earn a couple of enduring new nicknames from the experience.

Xx

Last week, on the second anniversary of my coming to America, we had a hurricane. Last year’s encounter with Hurricane Irene – whilst destructive elsewhere – was largely, for me and those I knew, a spectacle to watch online and a day or two of enforced domesticity. Hurricane Sandy, however, is still being acutely felt today, both by those directly affected the damage and those citizens of New York who were able to escape unscathed.

By good fortune, I fall in that latter category, losing only my internet connection and local amenities for a day or two, and my subway service for the foreseeable future — 10 days later, the tunnels are still flooded and electric signals likely ruined. But I have heat, I have water, I have power, my building and belongings are safe and I’m unharmed, so I shan’t complain about any smaller inconveniences when I have the luxury of working from home and a bike to get anywhere else I need in the city.

What’s really struck me about this hurricane is not the damage it caused, but the response it has provoked from normally-cynical New Yorkers. Requests for volunteers were swamped within minutes of being posted: I was turned away from three stations before finding a just-set-up soup kitchen in Coney Island where I could exercise the desire to physically help some of those worst-affected.

Donations still continue to flood in (and, alas, are still needed) and masses of stories continue to surface about individuals and local businesses giving power, generators, hot meals and everything else they can to those affected. Those with power ran extension cables outside for those without to charge appliances, those with generators drove hours to give them to those without power and those businesses with the ability to cook food gave it all out for free to the communities that have supported them throughout the year.

There were cases of price-gouging too though. Hotel rates went up to $1,000 a night, though this was somewhat assuaged by Race to Recovery in which runners in the cancelled New York Marathon gave up their pre-booked hotel rooms to storm refugees. New York Sports Club charged $35 for non-members to shower, and lost a good amount of members when that came to light. There are many more similar stories coming to light, and the Attorney General has vowed to prosecute each one, as in New York it’s

Illegal for merchants to sell products at unconscionably excessive prices during an abnormal disruption of the market.

What wonderful phrasing.

Overall though, there’s been a real sense of coming together in this oft-segregated and anonymous city. I used to love New York as an entity to be interacted with, but now, I’m starting to love it as a community to be a part of.

Xx

Eight weeks ago today, I agreed to join the Ab Challenge. What started as a throwaway email between a few capoeiristas in LA who were inspired by how shredded one of the girls in my class was, is now an organised, collaborative effort between some 200 capoeiristas around the globe. Although, it should be noted, the majority of participants are, in fact, based in LA or NYC, but as any resident of one of those two cities will tell you, the rest of the world doesn’t really matter too much.

My days now start with a glance at the Ab Challenge daily email, which generally comes with an inspirational quote, a story or message from one of the participants, and any updates to the suggested workout routine for the day. Once a week, the routine has been changing to encompass a different subset of muscles – the obliques, the transverses, or so on – or techniques, with specially-recorded video guides as reference. The leitmotif of the daily update is ‘Abs three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner’, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

Breakfast
For breakfast, I’ll have a banana, yoghurt, and at least 300 reps of abs exercises in my room, where I have a multi-purpose workout bar, a medicine ball, and a yoga mat constantly set up. I’m also taking the opportunity of having such regimented workout sessions to work on a longer-term goal of being able to do 100 pushups on a whim, and so doing an increasing number of these daily. I started being able to do around 20 or so consistently, with proper technique throughout, and I’m up to 55 right now.

Snacks
After that, it’s a trip to the office, and it’s here that I’ve discovered that exercise is not just for the gym. I was initially very self conscious about doing so, but now I feel no qualms whatsoever about taking a few minutes away from work and doing a quick 100 reps or 50 pushups in the office. A few people have walked past mid-session, and a couple of them have commented, but no-one seems to really mind and, so long as I space out the exercises, I don’t end up sweaty and smelly at work. Food-wise, I’m always loaded up with fruit, nuts or trail mix, meaning I can eat smaller portions at mealtimes and never be hungry.

Lunch
For lunch, I was originally taking things a bit too far, only eating green salads or veggies & protein, but after losing about as much weight as I could healthily tolerate (I started out pretty skinny), I’ve moved away from that and instead I’m just trying to avoid overly fatty or sugary stuff. No more trips to Chipotle or Five Guys for me, but I’m not going to obsess about having some rice, bread or potatoes with my lunch.

If it’s not a workday, I’m generally out at a park or beach, which provides a perfect location for a more prolonged workout, but, even if not, I’ve discovered that New Yorkers don’t look twice no matter where I work out. I’ve managed a full two-minutes of planking on a busy sidewalk, 100 bicycle crunches on the cleanest bit of ground I could find in midtown and so-on. I should be a poster-boy for the Make New York City Your Gym campaign that’s running.

Dinner
In the evenings, the fact that I’m not drinking again definitely helps me to avoid a whole bunch of unhealthy crap – both the beers themselves and the inevitable cravings for greasy junk food – and, I’m working on it, but about 8 times out of 10 I manage to get a full workout done back in my room before I get to bed, no matter what hour I stay out until.

Naturally, all of this is in addition to Running Club – my effort to get myself and any local friends out running at 7am every morning – and Capoeira, which I’m training three-to-four times a week. I feel great. I feel healthy, and stronger than I ever have and, as there’s no-one else here to say it, thanks to this Ab Challenge I also look pretty great right about now too.

Time for a quick 100 crunches.

Xx

For the past week I have been – and more dauntingly, for the next ten weeks I will be – participating in an Ab Challenge with over a hundred Capoeiristas from LA and NYC. The aim is to have the biggest change in ab-definition by mid September, and to that end, we’re all working out with abs-focused exercises thrice a day, continuing our generally active lifestyles, and eating properly. That last one, is somewhat of an issue for me.

I very rarely eat at home. Perhaps three or four meals a week are consumed within the walls of my apartment, and of those, I might only actually cook one or two; the others being procured on my way home. Once one learns the right spots to visit, eating this way – in New York, that is – is probably slightly cheaper than buying and cooking groceries, and takes up far less of my precious time. However, it’s not exactly the healthiest of options, and so changing my diet has been one of the hardest parts of the Ab Challenge for me so far.

The first hurdle to get over is the extra expense. Whereas I can find a $1 slice of pizza pretty much anywhere, a tasty and healthy snack or meal-to-go will set me back significantly more. The second problem, of course, is finding such a thing. Hungrily walking the 10 blocks and 4 avenues from Grand Central to Korea Town this weekend, I counted more than 80 establishments willing to sell me cheap, greasy food of any cuisine or type I could imagine. I found nowhere at all on the walk that seemed remotely healthy, and eventually settled for soup ($4 – no complaints) at a deli I knew just past my destination. Everywhere I see people posting recipes for juices, smoothies and salads that I would dearly love to eat, but am rarely home long enough to make (and certainly not inclined to go to the effort of shopping for and then making, when I am home).

My final problem, then, is that the variety of getting healthy food when out adventuring quickly runs thin. There are salads (avoid the bread and creamy dressing), there are soups, there are juices and then one is at the mercy of the neighbourhood to find something a little more exotic and exciting to enjoy. Any gatherings with my friends that overrun mealtimes are particularly troublesome, as they – very naturally – tend to prefer bars or brunch places which serve tantalisingly juicy burgers, deep-fried everything and a whole array of fatty meats covered in cheeses and cream sauces, served with amounts of fries and bread that are unheard of outside of these United States.

This past Saturday, at least, I was able to bypass all of these hurdles, and enjoy some time in the sunshine to boot. I even arrived early and got in an extra session of abs-workout. A friend of mine had won a contest at salad-to-go chain Just Salad, and as part of her award, had won a salad lunch for her and, as far as I could guess from the amounts provided, at least 25 of her friends. The price was right, the variety was massive, the end result as satisfying as I could have hoped for and, even better, I got to share it with a whole bunch of friends.

10 weeks to go. Let’s hope there’s more of this, and less birthday parties in Southern kitchen -style bars.

Xx