FakeGreenDress's Profile

When I was living in Manhattan for college, I lived in a dorm built directly over a sharp curve in FOUR subway tracks. I thought I'd never be able to sleep with the trains squealing all night long. And yet -- I have good news for you! The subway noise you're hearing now will subside as the building fills with furniture and people. In my old place it was only really loud and rumbly during the holidays when no one else was around (enough so that my books fell off their shelf!), but when everyone was in town you could barely hear a thing.

I currently live in a building that used to be the rectory of the church next door. I love it. But we've discovered we have a very odd problem: deliverymen don't think our building is a residence! Even though we have huge house numbers above our door, our packages get dropped off on random neighbors' stoops (and occasionally not at all -- last week FedEx refused to deliver to a "closed business"?). If we order dinner, we always have to wait by the window for the lost-looking guy holding a bag of food to wander by.

Powdered buttermilk is great if you use a bread machine with a timer (say, so you can wake up to a fresh loaf in the morning). It's generally a bad idea to leave recipes with perishable ingredients sitting overnight, but powdered milk and buttermilk are ok!

I grew up in a city with no mass transit of any kind -- the sort of place where people will drive from one end of a shopping center to the other -- but I left my car at home when I moved to NYC for college. The subway was novel at first but now seems absolutely essential, and a decade on it's hard to imagine myself ever wanting to own a car again.

I got close to buying one recently, though: Hurricane Sandy meant my train didn't run at night for nearly three months (it's back now, whew), and I had no other way to get home if I had to work late. It was surprisingly stressful, and I felt trapped -- like a grounded teenager. But honestly, if it came to that I'd rather have moved than started driving again. It was a good reminder not to take 24-hour trains for granted. They really do make my life better.

When I get sick, I have a trick for doctoring instant chicken noodle soup (the sort that comes in an envelope and makes 3-4 cups at a time). Make the soup as usual, then while it's still boiling drizzle in a couple eggs that have been beaten with parmesan cheese. It adds a lot of protein, makes it a lot more filling, and is very easy on an upset stomach.

Strange to see this come up, as my office is FULL of these chairs. I'm looking at three of them right now!

A couple more detailed Kickstarter how-to posts from a composer and producer who has done this a lot (Complete with super-useful budget-planning spreadsheet!):

http://kevinclarkcomposer.com/2012/06/how-to-plan-your-kickstarter-part-1/
http://kevinclarkcomposer.com/2012/06/how-to-plan-your-kickstarter-part-2-2/

If, like us, you end up with more mint than you know what to do with (our apartment's previous tenants planted it in the herb garden and it tends to run rampant and also hang out a little too closely with the oregano -- mintregano is not tasty), you can make mint-infused bourbon. Pour out a couple of shots, then stuff as many leaves as you can into the bottle and leave it for two days. It's amazing stuff and makes you the most popular BBQ guests around!

Make a digital floorplan of your space before you buy furniture, and experiment with possible layouts. PlanYourRoom.com (2D) and mydeco.com (3D) are both useful for this purpose. Measure carefully!

Someone mentioned the Ikea Stolmen system for hanging bikes, but it's also a great room divider if you want something a little lighter weight visually than the Expedit. We have a loft-style living room and used Stolmen cabinets to separate our TV area from my office space, but you could also use the clothes rail pieces to hang curtains and create a bedroom space. The cabinets are expensive (we bought ours used from Craigslist), but the tension poles are only like $30 a pop.

That's awesome! I have this exact TV stand minus the doors. Think it had been my ex-boyfriend's mom's in the 80s? It's particleboard but it's really, really sturdy (weighs like twice what a comparably-sized IKEA item would) and I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. It's my landing strip now, with shelves full of shoes and a nice basket on top for umbrellas and gloves. I've disguised its previous function pretty well, but now I really want to swap the legs out...