Last weekend I went to see "Baby Wants Candy" - a fully improvised full-band musical. The show was a blast and I'll definitely be going back. But what stuck with me is that most modern musicals have a lot to learn about structure from the improvers.

I often get asked what's currently running in the NYC theater scene, so I decided to put it in a blog post for anyone else that may be interested.

Perhaps it was all the news footage of Chelsea Clinton's wedding, but I have become obsessed with the notion of getting a mini pre-fab home in the country. Sara had shown me this site a while ago and I can't stop looking at the images.

I took a new fitness class today. It was recommended to me by a friend. It's a gym that is only a block or two from my house called AeroSpace NYC (http://aerospacenyc.com). To be honest, I've been meaning to go for months. And this week I finally put my foot down with myself and said I had to go. And even then, I chickened out twice when I got to the front doors. Looking back on it, I have no idea why I was so stressed out about attending.

I just said goodbye to Sis and Lorenz. David was kind enough to use his miles to purchase tickets for Sis and Lorenz for a little winter visit. Looking back on it, it's hard to believe that it was just over two days. I'm surprised Lorenz' head didn't burst after all the activities we threw his way.

Last year, my friend Sara asked me about my resolutions that I had for 2009. For some reason, I took it very seriously and wrote a lengthy post about my resolutions. I accomplished most of them to some degree. I'm not going to worry about the ones that I apparently wasn't as resolute on as I could have been. But we both enjoyed the process so she wrote me this year for my 2010 resolutions. And here they are...

I had a treat today. Outside my office window, I was visited by two blue jays. I had been seeing them around the neighborhood recently, but these two hung out for quite a while just a foot outside my window. They didn't even seem bothered by my movement to get a camera and take photos.

I figure I'll get bored of posting the weekly CSA haul, but when I was looking for a CSA, I couldn't find any information about what was in the CSA from week to week. So maybe these posts will help someone else. Also, so far I've had something every week that I have never seen before in my life. So there's some food education going on here as well. Here's the note from the CSA about this week's produce:

This year, David and I signed up for a CSA - which stands for "Community Supported Agriculture". It's a way for those of us living in New York City to get a weekly supply of organic and locally grown veggies every week. The share is roughly $450 and lasts for 24 weeks. We also signed up for a fruit share, which starts later in the year.

A couple of weekends ago, Evan & Renee (Gogo & Oz's breeders) came to New York City for a visit. They had two of their dogs competing in the Westminster Dog Show. I was able to tag along for the Canaan Dog competition.

Marvel comics has been doign a great job of creating marketing events over the past year or so - which is good because they haven't focused on creating great comic books. This week, on the cover of "The Amazing Spider-Man", is Barack Obama. For some reason, this is a really big deal. Apparently there's a mini-story in the book involving Spider-Man and Obama. I'm happy for the author, who I think has been one of the more under-rated comic book authors in the past few years. I'm doing him a service by not reading his comics anymore, because whenever I start reading them, they get canceled.

We had our final photography lighting class. The assignment was quite open ended: EVOKE AN EMOTION It is now time to take all that you have learned up to this point and put it together into strong evocative images. Images that show you can control the mood and voice in your lighting technique. No pressure.

I'm a bit behind on my posts about photography class. Week 6 was all about black and white photography. I was hoping to bring in some male nudes, but all of my friends were shockingly prudish! I'm trying to figure out if that's because in the age of the internet, people just don't want someone to take nude photos of them. Or perhaps none of my friends trust me. Or perhaps the younger generation just isn't as comfortable stripping for art. Hmmm...

I missed the 4th week of photography class, so I'll jump right into week 5. This week in class, we started using soft boxes - which are big boxes of fabric you put over a light to direct all the light in one direction. There's a flat white part where the light emits, which diffuses the light.

If you live in NYC, you should go see Wig Out! at The Vineyard Theater.

Many years ago, I complained regular to anyone who would listen about the horrible state of espresso drinks in New York City. You only had a few choices: Starbucks, Your Local Deli, and restaurants. There were a few places in the village or Little Italy where you could maybe get a decent espresso, but you couldn't count on getting the good barrista on any given day - and without a good operator, you can only go so far.

The third week of photography lighting class, we worked on beauty lighting. We set up two stations with a tripod and a strobe light. We later added umbrellas to the mix to see how that affected things.

I have always wanted to be a better swimmer. I can manage to splash about and get somewhere when I need to, but I never really took to the water. A few years ago, I got a weekly swim instructor. He definitely helped, but I still felt like I struggled with the water a lot. And it was exhausting. I could only do a few short laps at a time without stopping to wheeze. I didn't know how people could swim lap after lap without stopping. A friend told me that I should learn to relax in the water and not try to swim so fast. Whenever I tried, I would sink, get water up my nose, etc.

The first review of my homework for my photography lighting class went well. He gave me a specific challenge: to photograph objects instead of people. I clearly enjoy photographing people and he wanted us to start working outside of our comfort zone.

I came home from Israel with several goals. Most of the fitness goals are well in progress. I had also decided it was time to take a new class. I loved the photography class that I took at NYU, so I looked for a new class along those lines. I narrowed it down to a photographic lighting class and a portrait class. The lighting class seemed to have a more broader application, so I signed up for that.

I came from Israel with many goals. One of them was to lose my extra weight. It's gotta go. Another goal was to enjoy more of NYC. I was definitely in a day-to-day rut. So I decided that one of the things that I could do to combat both of those was to ride a bicycle around town more often. I talked to my friend Jeff about starting to trade out days at the gym with long bike rides. We could bike along the water-front, we could bike to new neighborhoods, etc.

Last weekend was one of those perfect summer days in NYC - blue skies, billowy clouds that show off every last detail, and not too sweltering. Mr. R and Benji were in town, so I asked them if they wanted to go on a short cruise to see the NYC Waterfalls. The answer was yes and David agreed.

For our final class, we went mostly indoors. We went to the apartment of one of the class members for some experiments in indoor portrait work and then some night shots from her balcony.

This week was tough. We had a guest teacher - someone whose name I can't remember. He is a famous street photographer. He gave us his general philosophy about photography and especially street photography. For instance, he suggested that once we feel like we have the shot, step into it the shot by taking a step 1 - 2 feet forward. It makes a big difference. All of a sudden, you feel close to your subject.

Here are photos from our second photo walk. This walk was done in and around Bryant Park. The clouds were wreaking havoc with our settings, so we had to be nimble - and many of my photos came out too dark.

It took me a while to post these, but here are photos from our first photo walk. We took a stroll around Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building.

I saw the Roundabout Theatre's production of The Marriage of Bette and Boo. It was a great production and several days after seeing it, I'm still thinking of it quite a bit. It's one of the few plays I think I could see again and again.

Kevin had just started radiation. We wanted to do something special on the weekend. Our plans were to go to the Bronx Zoo, but the weather was not good and neither was Kevin's energy level. So we decided to go to the Central Park Zoo instead. We invited our friends Bob & Larry.

There's a certain part of my brain that is eight years old, is happy to be eight years old, and will always be eight years old. For instance, I am eternally grateful that I was eight years old when Star Wars came out. If I had to be born at any time, I'm glad that I was alive to be a kid when those first three Star Wars movies came out.

I'm seeing the real signs of spring in New York. It's not tulips on the sidewalks. It's not birds chirping in the air (although we have some really vocal ones in our backyard this year). It's movie crews. I always forget every year how much filming goes on in New York in the spring and summer. I've perfected my look of disdain when some overly pierced intern with a clipboard asks me if I could please walk on the other side of the street so as not to disrupt the shot.

David is in Paris and we were scheduled to see "The Magic Flute" at the Metropolitan Opera. Since we ran out of time to exchange them, we had the choice of donating them to the opera for a tax-deductible donation or scalping them. I decided it would be fun to try scalping.

What was quite exciting and novel slowly descended into hell by night. It's extremely disorienting to walk around New York City with absolutely no lights on at all. Even after living through it, I can't imagine New York without lights. David thought I was crazy, but I took a brief walk with Gogo after the sun went down. You could hear people all around, and you could see flashlights, but you couldn't see anyone. Gogo was very unnerved.

In August of 2004, there was a blackout on much of the Eastern seaboard of the United States. We were in Manhattan when it hit. At first it was a bit exciting, but as the evening approached and we realized we'd have to go through a hot August night without even a fan, I lost my taste for this little adventure.