Fourth of July Weekend

Last weekend, I took a few college friends out to the Hamptons with me for the Fourth of July. There were 7 of us all together, 3 of whom had never been to the Hamptons before, so I really wanted to show everyone a good time.

The girls (the three boys not pictured)

We did it all - the ocean, fireworks at the bay beach, barbeque, even the Montauk Lighthouse. It really felt like a vacation, even though it was only three days, and it was hard to come home!

My first 5K run!

My biggest goal this summer was to run a 5K. I started running last fall to stay in shape while I was in Bologna, since my friend and I were too cheap to join a gym, and I really liked it. At the beginning of the summer I was running about 2 miles each time I ran (maybe 3 times a week) and I decided that a 5K race (which is 3.1 miles) in August would be a good goal. If you had asked me last summer if I would ever run a 5K, I would have laughed. But today I DID IT!

I searched for a 5K run training schedule online, and decided on this one. I didn't do every single run it suggested, but I more or less stuck to it for 6 weeks. This morning, my mom and I drove to Southampton for Ellen's Run, which raises money for breast cancer research. It was really hot, and there was almost no shade on the route, but there were hundreds of people, and it was a lot of fun. My time was 30 minutes and 39 seconds - which averages out to a 9:52 minute mile, although I was running faster and slower at different points. I was sooooo surprised with that time, since I was expecting to do about a 12 minute mile, and I was very happy. Not bad for a first run! The adrenaline must have kicked in somewhere along the way. I'm sore now but very satisfied. My mom walked the route (but ran for one minute!) and came in at about 57 minutes. Hopefully next summer I can talk someone into running the 5K with me!

The Montauk Lighthouse

Today we intended to visit the Montauk Point Lighthouse, the oldest lighthouse in New York State, built in 1796. It was cold and rainy, but we braved it anyway. We didn't end up climbing the lighthouse, because it was so foggy that we wouldn't have been able to see anything. It was fun anyway!




Can you tell how dreary it was?

This photo, from the Montauk Lighthouse website, is apparently what it looks like on a sunny day:

After the lighthouse, we went to the beach just to see it. It was no longer rainy, and it was almost completely empty, which was really cool.


One good thing has come of the cold weather though - baking! This afternoon, we baked zucchini bread, and it was delicious.



Earlier in the week, we also baked honey whole wheat scones, which were very good with butter, jam, and tea.

A Day of Art and Wine

Today my friend and I visited the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center, which was the home of Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner. We got to see the studio in which Pollock made many of his greatest pieces - the floor is spattered with paint and looks like a painting itself. The walls are also splattered with paint from Krasner's works. She was also an artist and started working in the studio after Pollock's death in 1956. She didn't paint on the floor like Pollock did, so the walls still show remnants of her works while the floor shows paint from Pollock's works. The walls of the studio had panels narrating Pollock's life, as well as many photos of him and Krasner in the studio. It was surreal just standing in the studio. We had to put on special foam slippers to walk inside...but we were actually walking on paint from works of art that are in the Met, the MoMA, and the Guggenheim!

The backyard and Accabonac Creek behind the house

The tourguide (who was actually a Vassar grad) mentioned that almost all of the outdoor scenes of the movie Pollock, the movie of Jackson Pollock's life released in 2000, were filmed on the grounds. After touring the house and studio, I'm really interested in seeing the movie.

The back door of the house

Pollock liked to collect boulders on his property, and gathered them in the center of the backyard

The studio (unfortunately, no photos inside!)

The only painting by Pollock in the house or study center (there were other sketches and drawings made by him on display)

In the evening, we decided to go to a vineyard nearby that has live jazz and wine, cheese, and crackers on Thursday nights. It was a Tuscan-style estate, and even in the cloudy, drizzly weather it was beautiful.



I'd love to go back and tour the vineyard on a sunny day!

Tomorrow we're planning to go to the cemetery nearby where Pollock and Krasner are both buried, which has actually become known as the artists' and writers' cemetery. (Although Pollock, Krasner, and the wife of Willem de Kooning are the only names I recognized.) Here's the wikepedia page, which shows the gravestones of Pollock and Krasner, both boulders from their land.

Walk Along the Beach

A Saturday afternoon walk along the beach in Stony Brook, Long Island.