We didn’t want to venture out too far today, so we decided to finally visit the Jersey City Museum.  We’ve been meaning to go since we moved here in 2005.

The museum is tiny by comparison to most others we’ve been to, yet we spent almost two hours inside enjoying what it had to offer.  There are two floors of galleries, with a museum shop on the first and a theater with what looked like 100-ish seats for screenings and performances.

All the exhibits were interesting and worthwhile.  We particularly enjoyed the amazing body of work in “Deliverance” The Art of Ben Jones 1970 – 2008.  Learning about local history with items sometimes as simple as matchbooks in A Community Collects was also engaging.  Ask Chuleta was a riot–a must-see video exhibit.

We were surprised at how busy it was. A live jazz ensemble performed in the theater while we were there today with a few dozen spectators.  There were also lots of children attending an art workshop with their parents, creating Valentine’s Day cards in the style of Ben Jones’ collection of painted hand fans.

A glance at their website shows what appear to be some interesting upcoming exhibitions.  We’ll definitely be back. CARLOS & JOE

SETI project gone horribly wrong

Let me apologize first for commenting on a hat.  Clearly I’m more comfortable with being gay than ever before.

That said, oy, that hat.  At first I thought it’s probably some Green project that’s all the rage with celebrities, like a recycled piece of Skylab recovered when it fell back to Earth, or something you plug your cell phone into then face the wind to recharge as it spins up.  Later I realized she probably just misunderstood the instructions for converting her set to digital television. CARLOS

He’s at Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.   In just a week he’s made a remarkable improvement.  His left side was unaffected by the stroke, but he had weakness on his right side affecting his leg, couldn’t lift his right arm the first day, and had no muscle tone on the right side of his face, and was virtually unintelligible and having trouble swallowing.  Now he’s walking about, feeding himself with his right hand, and the slurring of his speech is much less pronounced.  He can’t drink water yet or items with a water-like consistency, he’s still aspirating them, so they serve him thickened drinks.  They stopped serving him mushy food, he even had a real hamburger on a bun last night, and a real fruit salad with angel food dessert for lunch.

He’s ready for physical, occupational, and speech therapy (he’s had some basic sessions so far.)  Tomorrow they’re deciding on in-patient therapy at an acute rehabilitation facility, or out-patient.  Cornell’s acute facility is in Midtown Manhattan, right on the East River. So even though it’s only a few miles away on the map, it takes me 3-1/2hrs each day of travel time round trip to see him by car or mass transit.  Also their rehab facility is out-of-network for Joe’s PPO and only covered 80%.  We don’t want to compromise his recovery, but a closer one, with equivalent care, that’s in his PPO network is much preferred.  There’s an 11-bed facility at Hoboken University Medical Center just one town up which would be GREAT.  We’ll know tomorrow if there’s bed availability and if not figure out our alternatives.

If you can use the work lucky with this ordeal, he was lucky.  He could easily have had memory loss or loss of cognition and we’d be living very different lives.  He’s himself though, just with some physical challenges to be worked on.  Hopefully the therapy will help, all the medical staff thinks so. I’m hopeful. CARLOS

Carlos in the garden at Taqueria Downtown

Right on the corner of Grove & Grand Streets you’ll find Taqueria Downtown, our favorite local haunt for Mexican food.  It has everything we look for in a haunt — it’s nearby, you can wear what you want, the food is tasty, and it’s cheap.

The menu isn’t huge, but the portions are! You’ll find tacos, enchiladas, flautas, burritas, quesadillas, and brunch on the weekend– no guacamole though!  They have soft drinks which include some funky imported ones, but it’s BYOB if you’re looking for something stronger.

The friendly staff takes your order as you walk in and you pay at that time.  Take your drinks and order-number-on-a-stick to your table and the food is brought out to you.  Your choices include indoor seating as well as outdoor — a cute garden out back with tables and picnic benches, as well as a few sidewalk tables up front.  Taqueria Downtown has take-out and delivers too if you’re not planning on venturing out.

There’s nothing foo-foo about this place.  In a word, the place is chill – a good thing to be in Chilltown. Is it the best Mexican food we’ve ever had, Ay Yay-Yay-Yay? No, but we give it two and a half Yay‘s. It’s a comfortable neighborhood spot to take your honey and friends to when you don’t feel like cooking or spending lots of money.  We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do. CARLOS

Marching with the God’s Love We Deliver gang during NYC Gay Pride ’92 CARLOS