Ghost

I wasn't feeling particularly well that day to begin with. Tuesdays tend to be extremely slow at work and I hadn't slept well the night before. When Rebecca walked in my immediate reaction was panic. I guess that's typically how I feel when separate worlds collide like that. I felt strangely exposed with this girl who I mostly knew from parties years ago standing in the restaurant. Which is especially strange in light of how brutally exposed she always seemed to me. So pale and small. So unabashedly in love with boys who clearly didn't care about her. So uncomfortably idolatrous of our lives. We talked and she still seemed bizarrely overexposed, immediately volunteering how unhappy she was with her job and where she lived. She went on to recall how cool she thought we were four years ago. We ("your crew," she said) had seemed like everything she wanted to be at the time. I feel something close to vertigo trying to imagine how we looked to her, even all this time later. Smoking cigarettes on the windowsills, playing cards, drinking constantly, always dressed deliberately strangely. Four years ago I felt like I knew this city, I had a place, a community maybe.

I felt ashamed. Like I had let her down or something. By becoming this mid-twenties waitress without direction. Who always meant to keep in better touch with that electrically close group of friends. Who hadn't done anything at all cool lately. Who was dressed in black and wearing cheap, conservative stud earrings.

It's weird to be moving away. I am sort of afraid that I have stayed here too long. That a particularly New York brand of cynicism has seeped into my perspective. Looking back on those first two years I can hardly retrace how I ended up here. In Queens, twenty-six, perhaps permanently single. And when I get on that plane, how will all of this New York-ness subside? In what pockets and corners will it store itself? And once I have done it, have realized my purpose, my desires, my self, will I call you all and tell you about it? And we'll laugh and understand each other based on all that time together, all those years ago?

So I was gonna update my blog layout the other day and renew my commitment to writing and probably run a mile or whatever. But instead I made a tumbler. Did anyone notice? It's really lame. And I'm not just not linking. Cause I do know how.

*

Tonight I went with Jeff to a birthday party on 46th St. and 9th Ave. When we were walking up 8th Avenue from the subway I noticed the glow of the lights from Times Square against the buildings one avenue over. It gave me that sort of strange swell that you get sometimes in places that are so "quintessentially" New York but don't hold any particular meaning. No one experience in the five years I have lived here has been especially connected with the lights in Times Square from one avenue block away. How it's sort of strangely silent for all its activity. In the middle of everything. And part of me started thinking about the strangeness of the idea of the Perseids that might be falling just above the cloud cover that was reflecting all that light back, like a giant stadium canopy. Sometimes I think about the idea that I could have been an amateur astronomer if I hadn't moved to New York. It's one of the stranger things I hold against the city. But I always have a fantasy of packing a picnic and renting a car and driving until the roads are dark and there's a field where I can watch the stars falling from the heavens and think about how human it is to do that. How long people have been amazed at the beauty and spectacle and uncertainty, even now, of having the sky fall.

All you ever brought me was heartache and traffic.

Moving Forward

Am I right in saying that a denim mini-skirt is no longer a wardrobe staple? Both because it's 2009 and because I am about to be 26 and don't really rock the short-short skirt look anymore. Really, what do you think? And do you want it? Or anything else of mine, really?

I am sorry for asking you what your address was. I am sure you thought I was going to send a postcard. I almost definitely won't. I wrote one postcard to my grandmother but I doubt that I'll even get it together to find a stamp to put on it. Berlin is really fantastic. I have found it profoundly relaxing. There's nothing I feel compelled to do. The weather could be better, but being inside isn't so bad anyway. There are lots of nice people here and fun things to do if you want to have fun. I am sorry I am not even really making an effort with this blog post. I'll tell you all about it when I'm back in New York.

Wilcommen, Bienvenue...

So I am in Berlin. I have been here for less than 24 hours and I'm not jet lagged! Yesterday was probably the longest day of my life. It began around 12:30am when they started serving breakfast on the flight into Zurich. I had about four hours to kill there so I walked around the historic downtown area, took some photos and ate some birchenmuseli (super delicious yogurt/fruit/granola combo) and got on another plane to Berlin. Honestly it is so different from what I was expecting so far. Kendra and I mostly walked around Kreuzberg which is the neighborhood next to hers in East Berlin. It's really lovely with lush greenery and lots of old buildings. We lit off sparklers for the fourth of July. And now I slept a pretty normal night and we're going to eat some breakfast and take care of a bike errand and go on a canal tour of the city. Honestly it all seems pretty Dutch to me. Which makes sense, but you know. I'll check in again soon.

Pushing Through

So I am working on an essay for a job application. I sort of thought essays were just for school applications, but apparently I was lucky enough to select a job that also requires essays. Some of you may recall from my attempts at law school applications that I am not very motivated about writing essays. In fact, it might be said that I am not very motivated about writing at all (if you were to judge by, for instance, how often I update this blog). It's sort of a mystery to me. Because I really do love to words and writing and reading. I don't know if it's just like exercise (something I'm also unmotivated to do) and all one needs to do is get into the practice of doing it. Maybe I just need to push through the awkward sentences that don't lie flat on the page like they do in my head just like I should push through those uphill steps on a run when my legs feel like they're forty pounds heavier than when I started and my lungs tighten up in my chest so my shoulders touch my ears. And if I can't push through this two page essay how am I ever going to write the things I secretly hope to say?

I don't remember this, but is it possible that I don't need as much sleep in the summer time? It was really late when I went to bed last night (like birds singing, gray skies). And yet, I awoke a ten and haven't felt like going back to sleep.

In the Morning....

... I get out of bed and putter through my email, news and Facebook until my eyes and body are awake enough for tasks like washing every single glass in my apartment (thanks for coming to Richard's birthday everyone!). Sometimes there is just so much jarringly dramatic news on the Times homepage that I just don't know how to process it so early. Today, for example:

1) General Motors went bankrupt.

2) A plan carrying 228 people abruptly went missing.

3) An doctor who performs abortions was shot in Kansas (what is this, the early 90's?).

The world can just be so large and scary. And so much less-preferable than bed.

I just deleted my MySpace and Friendster profiles. If that's how you've been keeping in touch with me, I am very sorry. Please don't take it personally. But we haven't been in touch for a while anyhow. That is all.

Recipes: Fage

So for a little while now I have been using 2% fat Fage (the Greek yogurt) as a substitute for creamy fatty things that would turn a normal meal into a serious undertaking of cholesterol (mayo, sour cream, ice cream, creme fraiche, etc.). It's great in dips and dressings especially, I find. I have recently developed two delicious new applications for Fage:

Berry "Sundae"

The other night I really wanted ice cream, but really didn't want to put on pants and shoes and a jacket to walk to 7-11 in the rain. I was working with things I had in the kitchen.

1 cup strawberries
3/4 cup Fage 2%
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
Squeeze bottle of agave nectar (to taste)

Dice the strawberries and put them in a bowl. Grate lemon zest directly onto the strawberries (make sure you spread it out, it's powerful stuff). Top with Fage. Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for a couple minutes and dice (you can dice then toast and it might be easier). Squeeze agave nectar directly onto berries and yogurt (this is the "fudge" or "caramel" or "strawberry syrup" element, so don't be stingy). Top the whole thing with toasted nuts.

This was sort of a small meal-sized portion. You could play with ratios but I liked that there were chunks of berry and nut in every bite. Richard and I shared by passing the bowl back and forth, but if you find it's more civilized to split it into two portions that could be nice too. I would be very interested to try variations on the type of nut and berry used.



BATS

I have long felt that adding avocado is a sure way to turn any sandwich into a luxury (this might not be true of a fluffernutter which is already sort of a luxury). When applied to the already scrumptious BLT, this fatty fruit has a sort of transcendent affect. It can, however, compound the already complicated structural challenges of this sandwich. But no longer. In this application the yogurt allows the avocado to act as an adhesive. It also replaces the mayonnaise (though you could certainly add mayo if you like).

2 pieces of your favorite sandwich bread, toasted
3 or 4 pieces of bacon, fried to desired crispiness
1/2 tomato, sliced thin
several leaves of baby spinach
1/4+ of a ripe avocado, diced
1/4 cup of Fage 2%
salt

Mash the avocado into the yogurt with a fork. Chunks are not a problem, but you don't want them to be too big. Add salt and mix in to taste. Spread on one side of each slice of bread. Assemble sandwich with remaining ingredients (I will not presume to prescribe whether your bacon touches your tomato, spinach or both). Enjoy!

Nadir

"Dowd: Put Aside Logic

Can we Kling On to our newspapers in the galactic age?"

This was the tag for Maureen Dowd's column today. It appeared next to a photo of Barack Obama, the president of the United States, photoshopped to look like a Vulcan. On The New York Times homepage.

Sixteen Years Later, A Shout-out to the Klutz Braids and Bows Book*...

This is actually how I'm wearing my hair today.


*Remember when every girl got that book for her ninth birthday? (Eight birthday? It's sort of a blur)

If I Had a Twitter Account...

... it would probably constantly say things like, "is Donald Sutherland really the father in Pride and Prejudice?* So be thankful.

*Yes.

Update

If you're reading this you probably know that I am not very consistent with posting on this blog lately. The truth is my life is somewhat sedate (or at least static) right now. However! There are a couple things on the horizon which you can look forward to reading about on EPE. Should everything go as planned, this blog will resume its initial function as a mechanism of keeping in touch around September. I will once again set off for distant lands. It's likely that I don't do a very good job keeping in touch with you now, but while abroad I expect to feel lonely and isolated at least some of the time at the beginning and I'm sure I'll be eager to reach out to all of you.

What (you may be asking) is the occasion for this adventure? Well, I guess I'm just feeling sort of bored (see above comments about sedation and stasis). So I have enrolled in a course to become certified to teach English as a foreign language. Hopefully I will find a job by the end of the summer in time to jet of to some Latin American location. I really don't know what country I'll be going to or how long I'll be there. Like I said, it's an adventure.

Prior to that I'll be taking a short trip to Berlin at the beginning of July. If anyone in Europe is reading this and wants to plan a meeting, let me know! I will be planning to update while there to practice for my longer adventure at the end of the summer.

SO while this is a pretty lame, perfunctory post, the not-so-distant future holds oodles of posts employing my signature observational wit and knack for unflattering photography.

Night Hunters

Around September my building got a new Super. Generally it's been a seamless transition. The most notable change has been that notes posted on the front door regarding proper recycling procedures are typed rather than sharpied onto yellow post-its. Until Saturday. On Saturday I awoke (far, far too early) and looked out the window next to my bed to see this:



EEK!! There is a huge, menacing owl on my fire escape! In the daylight! Surely it's a portent of doom!

No. After rubbing my eyes a bit and allowing rational thought to seep through the visceral fear, I saw that the owl was made of a plaster-like substance. It seems that in an effort to frighten the gaggle of pigeons (do pigeons flock? roost?) which lives on the telephone line behind my apartment building (and subsequently shits on every imaginable surface along the back of the property), my Super has installed a parliament (thanks!) of owls on the fire escapes and fences overlooking the offending cable. Which should be fine. I don't like the shit or the menacing sound of wings flapping against my window panes. But these are really scary-looking bird effigies. Let's take a closer look:



It's not so much that they are realistic facsimiles of actual owls. It's more that they are truly evil looking. If I were a pigeon, I would head for the hills. The actual pigeons are not so smart. They titter away on the phone line in spite of the dozen or so predators peering down at them. I am not so peaceful. Mostly I keep the curtains drawn tight to avoid the sight of them. But when falling asleep at night I sometimes imagine the hunkered silhouette of that stoic bird of prey illuminated against the curtain. Wild visions of those orange plastic eyes, lit by some internal, diabolical light play on the backs of my eyelids. I sometimes wonder whether this isn't some manifestation of a personal vendetta the super has for me. Were those Christmas cookies I baked dry? Does he think I am not separating my paper recycling properly?

The only thing to do is carry on with drawn shades. Hoping that when he sees the pigeons have remained he'll remove those monstrous forms. And my dreams will once again be my own.

On the Off-Chance I Didn't Send You This on G-Chat...

Baby flamingo:



And baby flamingo:

Sign of the Times

So my dad has a tendency to give some very random gifts. It's almost like he gets flustered in the middle of shopping by how many girl-y things he is expected to buy (for my mother, sister, me...) and just grabs at jewelry and small electronic items (flash drives really are excellent stocking stuffers though!). Anyhow, this year he got me this bottle of champagne:



Which is actually really nice, not because of my love for the Dutch designers Viktor and Rolf, but because I really love champagne and feel an intrinsic connection with rose (imagine the accent, please) especially due to my name* (which my father also gave me, so it's sort of all just a big circle). The point is that my dad, of all people, fell for the bizarre marketing of a bottle held upside-down in a plexi-glass box. To add more confusion to the matter, the box is not even a perfect rectangle! It tapers at the bottleneck end, making it impossible to wrap! And my father is obsessed with gift wrapping!** All of this brings me to the point: although I have had this bottle of champagne in my fridge since christmas, I have never felt like there was reason enough to drink it. Clearly, when I am not able to find a reason to drink champagne in nearly two and a half months, I (and the world at large, perhaps) suffer from a general malaise.

*Contrary to common wisdom, there are many rose-like things that I enjoy and don't find at all cliche (accent, again) as gifts. Rose champagne, roses themselves, these are all great gifts!

** My father has pieces of paper he uses to wrap christmas gifts that are fourteen years old. One year he challenged himself to use as few pieces of scotch tape as possible. He actually wrapped a fairly large gift using only the adhesive from a stick-on bow!

Haiku for the Season

daylight savings time
at four it feels like it's three
at five it is five

Is my inability to form meaningful goals the cause or merely a symptom of the fact that I am currently flipping between reruns of How I Met Your Mother and Star Trek: The Next Generation? And maybe also the fact that this sort of thing happens often.

"At this point, male readers may want to go outside and toss a ball around for a while. No matter how sympathetic, how curious or how deeply interested in life’s little yuck factors* you are, this collection is unlikely to hold more than the mildest intellectual appeal for you. But it is hard to imagine any woman, from the most straitlaced and body-denying to the most uninhibited and body-embracing, who will not read right through it with pure enjoyment, small flashes of recognition and the urge to buy it for every female preteen in sight."

-some lame NYT book review.

Seriously, it's about fucking time everyone- man, women, kids on the playground (well they're ok, I guess)- to just stop being so damn squeamish about menstruation. It's part of everyone's life in one way or another. And there is no better reason than naive fear that no one will admit that it's sort of fascinating. That it is a biological mechanism that essentially allows women three-quarters of the time of their fertile lives having sex for pleasure. We are fascinating beings!

*That's a female reviewer referring to the subject of menstruation as a "yuck factor." In my opinion, rotting feces left un-flushed in a toilet for days is a "yuck factor." Menstruation is something that is CONSTANTLY HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.

It's possible that my vampire obsession has gone too far...

Among other things, 2008 has brought a resurgence of my young adult fascination with vampires. Blame Twilight or True Blood or the new series Vamps (Gossip Girl meets Twilight, I am not made of stone, you know)... Whatever the reason, yesterday marked the culmination of this fad when I incurred this wound while at work:

*


Although it was a incident of freak glassware breakage and not the undead that caused the incisions near my jugular, I am going to take it as a sign that I should close the book (or books) on vampires with the close of the year. And move on to werewolves.

*Um, yes I am wearing the t-shirt from the 2001 Project Shakespeare production of Richard III.

Dear Baby Animals,

Please stop being so cute so I can finish my essay.

Rose

So it's really a good thing that no one has to hear all of my thoughts. Not merely because it would be very invasive of my privacy, but also because some part of my brain is singing November Rain for the ENTIRE month of November. It actually started around October 29 this year. And honestly I don't think anyone has the patience to withstand so many guitar solos in wheat fields and wedding cakes falling off tables in slow motion. If you had to think about that stuff as often as I do, you'd certainly go crazy. And December is only slightly better because I am not intimately acquainted with the video for Long December by Counting Crows. So it's just the lyrics on loop. All month long. Happy holidays, mind readers!

So I am REALLY trying to write this personal statement but while writing I started listening to Ys for the first time in a little while. It's just so lovely. And though I probably listened to this song enough times while I was in Amsterdam to add up to a week of my life, I still think it's the best. Also it's really amazing to watch people play the harp. The amount of sound that one instrument can make! It's fantastic. I am particularly partial to the passage that repeats, "Why the long face?" Back to work now.

Sad Truth

So this is what The New York Times homepage looks like right now. So maybe this makes me totally un-international (or whatever) but I found it very confusing to have a picture of a peach stand next to a story about Georgia the country and not Georgia the state. Counter-intuitive if you ask me.

Also I am deeply disappointed in all of you for not sitting me down and forcing me to watch Slings and Arrows. Really what were you thinking?

Somehow I've become so nervous about these election results that I'm acting like I'm going on a first date. So not only am I compulsively changing my clothes (I was wearing a red shirt!! Now it's blue...) but I'm also making lots of really bad jokes. Mostly asking things like, "When will we kno-bama?" or thinking that when Mary says, "Back to you, Wolf" they should hilariously have Wolf the American Gladiator on screen. You know to break the ice a little. The tension is killing me!

Thanks Stef!

Stef got me the number one best hoodie of all time. Here it is:



Not only is it in hipster-as-what, awesome red and black watch, it is also lined in this super soft and furry faux sheerling. And to top it all off there's a secret pocket!!!!!!


On an unrelated note the late night electric guitarist on the F train (you know with the hat and the amplifier?) has learned "Baby Can I Hold You." And it's definitely more appropriate in terms of tone for the quiet, late-night ride, but it's kind of awkward to be listening to this song and accidentally make eye contact with strangers. Also I forgot how affective the song is. That's all.

Still in it!!!!!!!!

Between the Twilight saga and Tru Blood I think it is safe to say that all contemporary vampire themed cultural output is terrible. Alas for the good old days:

Ruminations on the Bolt Bus

As I type these words a young man is nodding in and out of sleep over his MacBook Pro to my left as vistas of scenic Yonkers speed by on my right. Yes, through the wonders of modern technology I am connected to the Internet and traveling to Boston at the same time. I really have no concept of the mechanism that makes this possible. Am I getting service via a cell phone signal? Is there some giant satellite dish on top of the bus (I checked as I was getting on but it could be in the middle, out of view. Buses are tall)? Regardless, this magical manifestation of modernity allows me to bore you with these observations:

The Bolt Bus stops at the corner of eighth avenue on thirty-fourth street. There's a plaque commissioned by the Ukrainian American Society on the building there which recognizes the location as the site of Nikola Tesla's death. I briefly wondered at the possibility of deliberate symbolism in deciding to have a giant red bus with a lightning bolt on the side stopping in front of Tesla's death place.

Hell's Kitchen seems like a sort of adorable neighborhood. After four years in New York I'd never seen it before today.

Initially none of the power outlets were working on the bus. This created a sort of mini-hysteria. The tensions ran so high that the bus driver pulled over at ninth avenue and fifty-first street to fix the problem. We had been moving for seven minutes and the repair took at least ten.

According to their website, Bolt Bus stops at 34th and 8th when going to Boston and Philly and 36th and 7th when going to DC. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the Philly and DC buses stopping in the same place on the West side with easy access to the Lincoln tunnel and have the Boston bus stop somewhere further east with easy access to the Tri-Borough bridge or at least FDR drive? It took us forty-five minutes to get out of Manhattan today.

I saw a giant beautiful rainbow ahead to the east as we turned on to 287. A prodigious sign, to be sure.

The dude in front of me is totally watching Reality Bites.

At five-thirty we passed the last exit in Norwalk, CT. This was two and a half hours into our supposedly four hour and fifteen minute trip. I might reach the end of the internet.

I uesd to not be able to sleep on any moving vehicle, but somehow in the last year or so the opposite has become true and I have started nodding off without even meaning to. I am worried that this is the first sign of an early-onset dementia. Also, since I unwittingly napped today, what if I'm not tired enough tonight to go to sleep early to wake up early tomorrow to go to sleep early tomorrow to wake up early on Saturday for the LSAT????? Seriously. I am not very good at sleeping.

In addition to mid-90's melodrama, the dude in front of me is assiduously tracking our progress forward on Google maps. He should clearly be traveling by plane.

This has essentially devolved into a Twitter. I'm going to go watch funny stuff on Hulu.

7:30 is an inhuman hour at which to wake. Damn test.

Fall Outerwear

So I'm really trying to be good about studying and prep for the LSAT (7 days!), but tonight I am going to a birthday party and it's rainy and I have to wear a jacket. Choosing a jacket is of course an epic decision and because Richard has already left for the evening it falls to you, dear internet, to be my second eyes.

Mostly my fall weight outerwear has been acquired through various forms of "free." In fact the only thing I bought I have had since I was 20 (at a adorable thrift store in Hungary). So there's something a little bit weird about all the options (ordering from least to most weird):



This is the one I bought. It's cute but the arms fit kind of funny, right? Also the zipper doesn't completely work anymore.



So Kendra gave me this vest when we were living together. Prior to my wearing it, we had tacked it to the wall for decoration. It's also pretty short. In like a 1993, cropped-tops-are-hot kind of way.



This jacket also has some early 90's appeal. I got it at a clothing swap (thanks Ella!). It seems like a normal-ish choice, but then you realize that the collar and cuffs are lined with faux fur instead of wooly sheerling. It's challenging.



I honestly love wearing this coat. But it's actually a little bit longer than your standard trench. And the bottom is more of a full skirt than an a-line. It can look sort of intensely dramatic. Yeah, it used to be my mom's.



Can I ever wear this in public? Is any outfit plain enough to balance the oversized shoulder pads and the mid-80's pleating details? This one comes courtesy of my aunt Sukins and was the inspiration for my first request for a leather jacket.

Helpful Hints: How Italian Men Can Improve Their Game

So I went to a wine tasting today. Generally they're sort of crowded affairs in conference rooms or ballrooms of hotels. Tables ring the room and there's a bunch of cheese and bread and bottled water in the middle. I sort of dress up for these things. I guess the rule is to look professional, but my motivation is generally to look older and more serious. It's hard enough to get men to take me seriously about wine without looking like the kind of girl they try to pick up in bars. Today that involved the shoes pictured to the right (with slacks because the skirt was just too shiny). Nonetheless I managed to be the youngest woman in the room. A charming, older (let's say late 70's) gentleman took a particular shine to me and followed me around to a few tables. Although he had many complimentary things to say, my personal favorite was when he called me a "mountain of glory." It's important to picture this man, standing about 5'4'', fumbling through his Sicilian accent, doing his best to channel Martin Scorsese in his tie-less black suit. I would like to take this opportunity to tell all you Italian men reading this blog that words like "great" (as in "great tower of beauty") and "mountain" might best be left out of your courtship routine.

Tonight I was on the R train (taking the longest route home possible) and when passing through the Courtlandt Street subway station and I started to think about the newspapers on the platform and whether they were from seven years ago. And then I started to think about how that was seven years ago. And then I realized today is the four year anniversary of my move to New York City.

Right after that I thought about the perfect poem to describe that feeling of how the general history reminded me of my particular history and how it was all sort of uncertain and nostalgic. But I just spent about twenty minutes looking through Google for this poem and I don't think it exists after all. Which makes me wish I had a photographic memory so I would always be able to quote exactly what poem I was thinking of. Or maybe I should just write my own poems. Or go to bed.

What Not To Do: Late Night Messaging

As many of you dear readers have experienced, I have a penchant for late night, less-than-sober, text-based communications. It's something I am certainly not proud of, but it's who I am and I don't know what I can do about it short of developing breathalizer software for my phone and computer (hear me Steve Jobs?). Normally message recipients are good friends and occasionally *cringe* former lovers. Last night, however, I managed to send the following message to a Facebook friend who I went to KINDERGARTEN with (and haven't seen since I was fifteen, probably):

I noticed that you're currently employed by Legal Seafood. My sister has been gainfully employed at the Park Square location of that same chain for the last three years... I was thinking you might be unwittingly working side by side for the last several weeks without even knowing your connection! But, basically, if you're working with a girl named Molly who looks uncannily like me, you should say hi, cause she's my sister.....
Late'
Rose

My concern is not really that I said something stupid. The content isn't particularly damning. I just think about how it must look to recieve such a random and syntactically quirky message with a 3:47am date stamp. Not good. Not good.

Hardly a Post

So I'm a jerk and I never update. Noted. Mea culpa. But here's what's news lately:

1) My new sunglasses are so fly:



Sometimes I'm wearing them and it's like, "Damn, New York. Can you stop sweating me for a little? Cause I have to walk here."


2) You should all try the 2007 Muga Rose. It's not super cheap but it's well under $20 and it's easily the best rose I've had in over a year. So delicious.

3) It seems likely that I'm looking for a new job. I want to keep working with wine and I feel pretty open to what's available. Hit me up if you know something.

I just had to tell myself, "Rose, it's 3:15 am and you are going to publish a blog post about dating? Get your mind right and go to bed."

Teenaged

So there's this girl who has been sitting on my stoop all day. I am pretty sure she lives in the building cause I've seen her before. And I don't know for certain that she's been there all day, but let's say it's been an hour or two. I would guess she's fifteen. All she's doing is scrolling through her cell phone and flipping it open and closed. I mean, I haven't been watching her continuously, but as far as I can tell. It's important to note that I don't have one of those grand, Brooklyn, Do The Right Thing kind of stoops. The stoop is an inch and a half higher than the sidewalk. The point is, she's almost certainly just sitting out there cause she has nothing else too do and doesn't want to sit her apartment because of family or heat or whatever, but mostly boredom. At least things might change a little on the street. You know cars drive by. Occasionally there are bicycles. The point is, do you remember how boring it was to be a teenager?

Thinking back, I have no idea what I did to pass the time when I was fifteen. Except Shakespeare summer camp, of course. Leila and I took the T to places like the Cambridgeside Galleria because were so used to the Copley and Prudential malls that they were boring. Malls are categorically boring of course, so it seems like we must have been bored once we got there too. And I guess I listened to the radio alot then as well. Which means that I must have spent alot of time at home near the radio. Jeez. So much time just passed in my life without anything happening.

So far this summer has been incredibly boring. No offense to anyone I have had a great time with in the last month. The days are just full of pointless scrolling through internet pages and long walks and magazines. I feel like I am waiting for my life to happen which is how I remember feeling when I was a teenager. And it's really dumb because I'm obviously old enough to know that you have to make things happen and that sitting around drinking coffee like a dullard is not how to do it. Which is unfortunate because lately that's all I've wanted to do.

Melons

Recently one of my coworkers told me that pure watermelon juice has an almost immediate laxative effect if consumed in large enough quantities. I haven't remembered to test this claim with research or experimentation, but it would be a sort of weird thing to fabricate, so I believe it. Then today I read this about the arousing effects of watermelons. Which leaves all of us (or so I imagine) wondering about the intersection of these two unexpected properties of this refreshing summer fruit. Which is sort of a gross image and generally involves too many seeds.

Failure of the Algorithm?

According to IMDB, if I like How She Move I might also like Porky's and The Notebook.

Like Wearing a Hat of Someone Else's Haircut Over The Haircut I Asked For

Dearest Readers,
Do not get student haircuts. My "long layers" vary between three inches and a foot and a half. I think I might have to pay real money to get this monstrosity fixed. On a side note, if you get an obvious haircut, will anyone who notices tell you it's awful?

Announcement: Growing Up

I'm alone in the apartment for the week. Which is mostly sad and lonely. Especially because without Richard I always forget how to watch TV and just spend hours on end watching TLC. And really how many makeovers can you watch before they loose that magic?

But about five minutes ago I had this sort of epiphany. I was putting my dinner leftovers in the fridge and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by how grown up I am. Like the beginning of a Meg Ryan film, I was sitting on the couch sipping wine thinking about my life. I refrigerate leftovers and do my dishes after I finish eating. I am fastidious about my fiber intake. I carry band-aids in my wallet. I even remembered to buy dental floss today cause I'd run out.

And I'm turning twenty-five. In five weeks. I've been obsessing about it for the last couple months and I'm finally comfortable with being a quarter-century old. I know it's silly to get hung up on a number, but everyone has to face the stigmas attached to growing up at some point. And I'm ready to grow up a little.

So here's the announcement: I'm gonna be a lawyer. I took my first practice LSAT today. Helen is kindly lending me her prep books. Logic game practice isn't going to be the funnest summer activity I've ever undertaken, but there's a sort of thrilling challenge to them from a certain perspective.

Top Seven Songs

So I've been tagged. In my opinion this is one (very small) step up from sending along chain letters or involving friends in pyramid schemes (though I only know about those in so far as they played a role an unusually boring episode of Mad About You), but I am going to respond. I am not, however, going to tag afterward. Mostly because I don't really know anyone who writes a blog who would actually respond to a tag. Except maybe Tommy. So go ahead if you like, Tommy.




I am supposed to list my top seven (why seven?) songs at the moment with explanations for each. If I were to be completely honest this list would consist entirely of songs by Mary J. Blige, but since the explanations would all be "She's so awesome," I thought it would be too boring even for this blog. So here it is. Seven songs I like a lot right now. Keep in mind that I exist in a strange musical bubble.

1. "No More Drama"- Mary J. Blige
I picked this as the representative song of my Mary J. obsession in part because it awesomely uses the theme song to The Young and the Restless (which Mary J. awesomely name checks in the lyrics). But most importantly, I think it's a lesson we can all stand to learn, no matter how many times we've heard it since 2001, "No more drama in my life." Yes.

2. "Happiness is a Warm Gun"- The Beatles
According to my iTunes (which knows nothing of what I listen to away from my computer) this is my most played song. Which makes sense because I sort of rediscovered it a month or two ago and ever since then, it will just pop into my head and I'll need to hear it. Mostly I get stuck in the beginning, "She's not a girl who misses much..." It has a great build and a great chorus as a pay off.

3. "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"- Neil Young
So for about three weeks in April I listened to this album constantly. It started out when I heard a live version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" during a yoga class and the line "It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game..." repeated in my head so many times that I went out and bought a used copy of the CD (because my dad's copy was in Boston, which is too far away to steal. Or borrow). So the title track is my favorite right now because it has those light hearted "nah-nah-nah, nah-nah, nah-nah"s on the chorus and I think that's appropriate for the season.

4. "Are You That Somebody?"- Aaliyah
Full disclosure? I downloaded this playlist of the "Top 100 R&B Songs of the 1990's." Treasures untold.

5. "Warrior"- the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
So when I'm at the gym and I'm feeling more aggressive or angry or something, I listen to the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs instead of Mary J. Blige. It's not often, but it happens.

6."A Case of You"- Joni Mitchell
... is probably my favorite song of all time.

7. "Try a Little Tenderness"- Otis Redding
This song will forever be attached to that scene in Pretty in Pink when Ducky spazzes out in the record shop and does those crazy pelvic thrusts. But I've been listening to lots of Otis all spring. He's wonderful.

So yeah. Nothing on this list is particularly current or interesting, but that's just the kind of music I listen to. No apologies.

Book Discussion Group: On imagery and nostalgia

On my way home from work tonight I had this strong bout of nostalgia for a college I never attended. It was a longer wait for the F train than usual and I was reading to pass the time. I started Americana by Don DeLillo earlier this week, mostly because it seems like everyone is always talking about how great he is, and even though I don't feel like I'm really into it (like I won't read another chapter instead of going to sleep at night), I like it. Anyhow, between the wait and the train ride I was probably reading for almost an hour. And I was thinking about this conversation I had with my friend Jean last night about descriptions of place and how important they are to stories and, at least so far, Americana takes place in New York City, so the descriptions are vivid in this way that they are not only so obviously and brilliantly concocted out of images from the mid-twentieth century cultural zeitgeist, but they are also images and places I live among everyday (or at least to the extent that I am in Manhattan, which is often enough).

So my nostalgia had to do with this fantasy I have about what life in "normal college" dorm is like. In this nostalgic reverie I pictured myself returning to the dorms at one-thirty in the morning and going down to the second floor (because my nostalgia is specific enough to place me on the fourth) to knock on the door of some dreamy English major I knew would be up (probably reading Proust or something awful like that). Anyhow, we would sit on his bed at a perpendicular angle to one another, with my back against the wall at the head of the bed and his against the wall against the length of the bed, and eventually, after dissecting imagery and the power of the ego in literature or whatever words we were using to mean "It's really fucking good the way he says that," I would tuck my feet under his thighs and we would feel really close but probably not even kiss because those situations always feel too heavy and cliche anyhow.

This fantasy is fraught for several reasons, starting with my cynical disdain for English majors and Proust. But also because it reveals the ways that my college experience was purposefully a-typical in a way that highlights how my late teens were to a large degree shaped by a desire to be "a-typical" and how it's strange but I sometimes regret that. But really only because lately my life is full of times like now when it's after three in the morning and I can't think of a single person who it would be appropriate to call in order to discuss literature. Maybe I'm just too old for that.

But when I came home I was glad to find Richard awake and we drank beers and watched the season finale of Greek, which is really a fantastically sincere show, but maybe feeds my college nostalgia-regret fantasies a little too much.

One summer I did this writer's workshop at UMASS Boston. I was turning fifteen and my parents didn't really know how to handle the too old for camp, too young to let loose balance. I didn't produce anything so fantastic (except perhaps that poem about bathrobes that I might be able to recite to this day), but I wrote this one essay that was published in the magazine at the end of the course about writer's block, pasta salad and my toes. This post is basically a rehash of that story, ten years later (oh god, I am so old. Pour me a metamucil). Also an excuse to mention my fantastic sneakers.

Sometimes it seems like social interactions are comprised of exposition ("I have done x, y and z things since we spoke last"), debate ("Obsessive attention to capitalization is NOT a valid reason for disliking e.e. cummings as a poet") and advice. I think I might be really into advice. Both giving and receiving. I don't know that I'm good at it, but there's something rewarding about the exercise of figuring things out through conversation. Lately whenever I am giving advice, even to myself when sitting on the couch wearing one shoe, the word perspective comes to mind. I feel like I use it so often that it is becoming meaningless. But when I look at things objectively it becomes clear that the only reason I feel a certain way so strongly is because of the circumstances around me. Give it a try. Is there really any problem you have, like something that's bugging you or unsatisfying, that couldn't be changed with a shift in perspective?

When I was talking to my mom the other day I came to realize that it's probably impossible for a single person not think about her love life. Even if you aren't really wanting to date or meet people, if you aren't with someone part of you is probably looking. It's a strange cycle and it makes things sort of annoying. I don't want a boyfriend but being single is kind of a chore. I wonder if people who have taken religious vows of celibacy are really completely free of this. Or if it's more an exercise in pushing away thoughts of sex and romance. I actually can't remotely comprehend the cloistered lifestyle. It's awful but my life is completely selfish in ways. And selflessness on that scale is... something other than what experience as life.

To be frank (because who really reads this anyway?) I feel a little bit funny about what I write on this blog and how personal I get and what the real purpose is. That last paragraph is probably the most I've ever written about my love life. Sometimes I have ideas for posts that would betray a specific event or feeling I'm having and I get nervous because I think that someone else will feel betrayed or that my exboyfriend will read it or blah, blah, blah. But I was thinking about the last few months and from my usual perspective (visualized as a stick figure on a director's chair in my brain) I haven't been doing much. But when I looked back at an old email I wrote in March (and never sent) I realized that there are a lot of things that are pretty different now. I was fatalistically perceiving time since I broke up with Josh as a flat line of events (work, walks and whiskey). But actually I'm in a totally different place now. And if reading something I wrote could make me realize that, could alter my perspective if you will, then it really is important to keep writing regularly and hope that the self-involvedness will dissolve eventually. Phew.

FIN

On Love

Tonight I was in a public bathroom reading the graffiti on the stall door (as is my wont) when I realized that the common symbol for love (a heart or <3), when paired with an "s" to make it grammatically correct, looks a lot like the common abbreviation for versus (that is vs). Although an amorous woman may have written Deidre "loves" Shaun (intending <3), it's easy to imagine how their time at the Irish pub might have ended in more of a Deidre "versus" Shaun kind of way. Which is just another way that our symbolic language is working much harder than we think.

Sunshine and an Announcement

Perhaps the best way to approach weather.com is as a silly diversionary activity. For example the hour-by-hour forecast is currently showing little thunder clouds every hour until five but my window looks like this:



The glare of sunshine obscures the fact that there isn't a single cloud in the sky. So I am going to open more windows and pull back the curtains and drink coffee and listen to Rubber Soul for a little longer then get dressed and walk to work. Screw you, weather.com.

But I have exciting news for you all (if anyone even reads this anymore). I am going away. Not permanently or tomorrow, but definitely going, going, gone. So for the months of September and October this blog may return to its original mission statement. I'll be subletting my room in Park Slope (anyone who's interested should enjoy television, wine and Samuel Beckett) and heading below the equator for the first time in my life! Right now I am thinking about buying a one way ticket and making my way back north with many stops along the way. So are you in South or Central America? Will you be in the early fall? Do you think there's somewhere I absolutely must see? Let me know!

Finally, I promise that I'll think about trying to be better at this blog. I am honestly in a very strange place in my life right now and sometimes it's impossible to put what I'm thinking into typed words that others might read. Mostly because it would read something like a kitten mewling at the door when it's starting to rain.

"In My Life" has just started to play and I can see the bottom of my coffee cup so I should sign off now, but I miss you all.

What I Should Be Doing With My Time

1) Flying.

2) Getting a good night's sleep.

3) Planning for the future.

4) Blogging?

Slate, Apartment Clean

Yesterday I managed to have a pretty low-stress (for me) dinner party. I made super easy comfortable stuff and we drank a ton of wine and it really wasn't a big deal that no one really knew anyone else. Anyhow, it made me realize how very much I love my apartment. There were only six of us here yesterday, but the room felt so full. Not uncomfortably so (it does when there are eight...) but just happy full. The yellow on the walls and the brown lap shade made it soft and warm feeling. Sure the chairs aren't that comfortable and the legs seems to be coming off one of them, but I love the way everything has been found, acquired, bought for a couple dollars and the overall effect is so unified and personal and feels reflective of me and of Richard. So it's really great to have people that I've met in various places all sit in this space and drink out of these cups that I found in a shoebox on the street.

I am feeling excited actually. Not because I am really doing anything special. But because I know that I am about to. I think it's a sort of thing with spring time. Right now it's still pretty chilly most days but the sun has been consistently brilliant. It's great because I have all this time and the stupid-big sunglasses so I can just walk where ever seems sunniest and soak in all the vitamins (or just D, really). I am thinking and planning and having ideas and throwing them out. It's like exercising a muscle. The change muscle. Feels good.

Not by way of explaination exactly....

but when you're crying lying down, the skin behind your ears gets wet. It tickles in an infuriating way.

Welcome Home, Indeed!

Yesterday, as our plane was taxi-ing into the gate at JFK the pilot announced that it was 15 degrees Farenheit outside with winds of up to 25 miles per hour. If it were relevant or customary, upon take-off earlier that day he would have announced that the outside temperature was hovering between 78 and 80 degrees farenheit with nary a cloud in the blue, smog-streaked California sky. Yes, I am home. California was just about perfect. The weather, sights, friends all wonderful. Like an early Spring now cruely plucked from my too easily fooled finger tips.

When I finally ventured out of my apartment this evening to buy some lentils (friend to the broke and irregular) I wore the following clothing:

(underwear and bra, given)
1. tights
2. boxer shorts
3. jeans (in that order, yes)
4. wool knee socks
5. other wool socks
6. hiking boots
7. t-shirt
8. hoodie
9. wool sweater
10. wool coat w/ lining
11. wool hat (under pulled up hood)
12. wool scarf
13. glittens

Recommended: Other People's Blogs

I know it's annoying to read posts that are all about not posting, so we'll leave it at this: I have no excuse. I am just not that good at it...

Ok, but here's the thing. I have some friends who really are. Leila, who has been my friend since sixth grade and lives quite near me now (might be moving closer! fingers crossed!), writes a blog about Boston restaurants as her job. In addition she has a personal blog and a tumblr (I don't really understand that phenomenon but it's fun!). For those keeping score that's three blogs she updates exponentially more frequently than I update this one blog. Additionally she is funny and informative while she does it. Were we not such good friends it might be intimidating.

Tommy, another old friend, though one who lives a little farther away, is also a very consistent blogger. He really posts everyday. And not because he's participating in some contest like me in November. His blog is basically about whatever he wants to talk about but he is always very earnest. It's striking how much he sounds like himself when he writes (or in his videos, but that's not the point). It's very charming.

Finally my room mate, Richard also makes his living writing blog post (and making advertising work right). In addition he has a personal blog that is also much more frequently updated than mine. While the subject matter is somewhat random he certainly has me beat for late-night, inebriated content. Whereas most of the posts I write after a bottle of wine are little more than a mess of misspelled words* and non-sequiturs, his are filled with a poetic self-deprecation that is both apt and hilarious. That's probably why he posts his and mine remain in the draft folder.

So if you're here and wondering why I haven't posted in a while (though it's probably because I'm on vacation... three days!!!!) you should try any of these trusted recommendations. Also if anyone knows how I can make one of those fancy link bars in the margin I'll include them there.

*Richard is my personal spell check (notably in the tags and titles where my general spell check doesn't work).

Haiku for Tonight

I have spilled lots
Of things in my purse but cough
Syrup is the worst

Un-Endorsed: Cuervo Black and Cola

So I just saw an advertisement (which played after midnight sandwiched between ads for gentlemen's clubs) which instructed me how to order a "Cuervo Black" and cola. Ok, so from what I can tell Cuervo Black is different from normal Cuervo because it's aged in charred barrels for longer. And according to sources* it is meant to appeal to an older, more discerning tequila drinker. And sure, the dudes in the commercial looked like the thirty-somethings in shiny shirts who hit on girls in bars who got in with fake ids. And to me Jose Cuervo is pretty much for eighteen year-olds bribing hobos in front of the liquor store (I hear). The thing is, you order Cuervo and cola the normal way but when your drunk bartender only hears the word "Cuervo" you just remind them not to reach for those shot glasses. Let me tell you about drinking tequila with coke. It's yucky. It tastes like coke until the end when it has that terrible tequila raw egg yolk essence. Truly, you can age your tequila in candy coated cola barrels and it won't taste good with coke. Let's get real.

*I actually don't intend to list my sources here.

[insert song lyric here..]

So on February 2 I am boarding a plane and leaving this cold mess of a city behind for a week. Josh and I am going to land in San Francisco and drive down to LA. It's actually a totally thrilling, glamorous vacation to be going on. We're going to see lots of friends and some giant trees and the Pacific Coast in all it's mid-winter splendor. If you are a secret reader of this blog and you live in California let me know if you want to hang out. Or if you have a suggestion of something we totally must not miss (especially in the Santa Barbara area where we are planning to spend a night to drink some wine and break up the driving a bit). Let me know!

Fashion Advice

So I bought boots online. You may know that I am inherently mistrustful of internet shopping. But I tried them on in a store first (in a different color) so I knew they'd fit. But now they've come and I am having my customary second thoughts. Unable to bring you, my trusted friends, to my apartment (because if I wear the boots outside I can't return them) I need your advice here on the ole blog.

Finally! The Butternut Squash Soup Recipe

By popular demand (or perhaps a g-chat message from Rachel) here is the recipe for the butternut squash soup I made yesterday:

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash, peeled, de-pulped and cut into chunks
1/2 onion (normal size, like a small person's fist) diced pretty small
2 in. of ginger root peeled and chopped
A pinch each of nutmeg, cinnamon and Cheyenne pepper (bigger pinches of the first two than the last)
2 cups chicken broth (give or take)
2 Tbs. heavy cream (or whatever seems good)
A bit of butter

-So you melt the butter in a heavy pot and saute it onions until they're pretty soft.
-Add the butternut squash, ginger and chicken broth, add water to cover the squash most of the way
-Bring to a boil, then add the other spices and a couple tablespoons of salt.
-Cover and simmer until the squash is soft (it took me 15 or 20 minutes).
-If there's a lot of liquid, strain it.
-Put everything in the food processor and whirl it around till it's pretty smooth.
-Add the cream and whirl some more till it's fluffy.

Oila! You're done!

I did not garnish my soup because I wasn't feeling too ambitious last night, but you can be pretty creative. Scallions or chives would be a good call. Or pumpkin seeds. Or sour cream/yogurt.

Keepin' it Smooth '08

So I don't like to brag here, but I got a pretty sweet gift for Christmas this year. A food processor. Like a real fancy, Cuisinart one. It's so sleek, so easy, so smooth-making. And although I did use it to make crusts for my annual New Year's Day quiche (little too wet, not so easy to roll), tonight I did an awesome food-processor-enabled thing. Butternut Squash Soup.


I have to say that this is one of my very favorite types of soup. And I do like soup. I just don't think it would be possible to effectively deliver the consistency that gives this soup that certain je ne sais quois (disclaimer: spell check doesn't work on French) with a hand-operated device. I'm sure all you Luddites out there reading this blog (you know, on computers) will balk at my newly mechanized kitchen habits, but really is there any other way to get that smooth, nearly fluffy texture? You see, what I did was add heavy cream during the processing of the soup. And it sort of fluffed up. Perfect.

And I hope this doesn't make you too jealous, but I'm going to eat it again for lunch tomorrow.

Who Wants to Hire Me?

So I have been finished with my internship for about two weeks now. Mostly I have filled that time with the holidays and cleaning up after them. I have also begun several projects of varying sizes I had been putting off for a long time. Mostly these involve minor improvements to the infrastructure of my apartment. For example we now have a coat rack in the hall so our living room chairs aren't littered with outerwear. Our toilet paper holder is now fully attached to the wall in the bathroom. My next project involves some new furniture pieces and a change of light source for the kitchen (the horrible florescent sucks at my soul). Perhaps less obviously productive I have begun to watch the much praised television series, Battlestar Gallactica. I'll write more about that in the future, don't worry.

The true purpose of this post is to beg for a job. I don't think I can work nights and intern during the day anymore. The schedule is too taxing and my personal life, sleep patterns and diet all suffered. And while I do like my night job.... well, it's time to grow up. And so, dear internet, I send out this earnest entreaty for all the world to read: I work hard, learn quickly and have the will/desire to learn a new trade. Please hire me.

Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

So I take cabs home a lot lately. Especially because the train never seems to stop at my stop after 11pm. And even though Michael Bloomerg has guaranteed me a quiet ride it seems most cab driver prefer to listen to the radio. Which I like because the silence of not understanding Farsi is sort of deafening at four in the morning. Tonight my cab driver was one of those who prefers soft-rock (great, but never David Allen Boucher). And while we were driving I had the pleasure of hearing my favorite (it's so hard to choose!) single from The Lion King soundtrack, "Can you Feel the Love Tonight." And everyone who knows me for the sentimental sap I am will realize that I was immediately reminded of the Freelance Troope in elementary/middle school and how we all sang along to that song at the cast party for Young Country, wherein I was Rachel Revere, wife to the famous patriot rider and silversmith. Yes, for a moment in the cab I felt one with Robin Gordon-Levitt and Stevie Weinstein-Foner once more... but now, all I am is tired and wishing I wasn't working in the morning.

An Open Letter to Gift Givers

To All Those It May Concern,

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I would like to provide a parameter of sorts for all gift-givers out there. Say you find yourself in a crafty clothing/jewelry/gift store while shopping. Say a certain something catches your eye. And this something is not exactly pretty. Or useful. Probably it's not like anything you have ever seen. You may find at this juncture that your thoughts turn to a certain young woman on your gift-giving list. Perhaps a woman who wears bright colors or clothing with an unusual style. I urge you not to buy this item. Even though you are surely thinking, "This is funky she'll certainly like this." In fact, ninety-nine times in one hundred, if you find something "funky" (that is a mostly positive term used to describe an object of unusual style or dimension), the recipient will agree that it is "funky" (that is possessing a terrible odor, at least metaphorically). I feel confident speaking for all such young women when I say they would much prefer something boring, useful or mundane.

With this caveat I wish all of you the very happiest of holidays and I submit the following photographic evidence to make your days even more merry and bright.

Love,
Rose



*Yes this hat is made of polar fleece.

Sunday Cooking Diary: A Prelude

So the weather is fucking awful right now. I guess you might say it's sleeting. But what that wouldn't convey is the bitter cold, wind and wet ice. Well, maybe it covers the wet ice part. The point is when I left work tonight I saw about four girls in skinny high heels fall down completely. But in spite of the weather I went grocery shopping. You see, Pot Luck Club is tomorrow and it has been time shifted to three pm. Many would note that that is fully the middle of the day, but when one considers when I normally rise on Sundays... well, you get it. Going to the grocery store is practically out of the question tomorrow. As it is, I didn't remember to buy paper towels or coffee which are probably equally indispensible to tomorrow's game plan. When I got home I decided to wash all the dishes in the sink.* This really puts me on my mark for waking up tomorrow (maybe not the caffine and absorption marks). So I don't regret it, really. What I sort of regret is my decision to watch DVR'd 30 Rock and drink a finger or two of the big bottle wine Richard left on the counter. Elaine Stricht is totally worth staying up for, but I think it's too late for me to see trailers for Sweeney Todd without getting too hot and bothered.

*On my way in I met one of my neighbors who is also a waitress and was coming home in the wet. My building isn't 100% geriatric! Comraderie!

Photo Gift!!!

Richard and I decorated the apartment for the holidays on Wednesday. Basically that consisted of a string of lights around a doorway, a few tiny Santa hats scattered about and what might be the world's smallest, saddest LED Christmas tree from Rite Aid. And while photographing the sad tree would have maybe been hilarious, nothing would have been cuter than my Christmas cactus wearing a Santa hat.



Happy Holidays!

Grammar Rant

Remember how I was talking about the somewhat counter intuitive writing style empolyed by publicists pitching books? Well at the risk of being repetitive, what the hell?? A couple of weeks ago I asked if I could write a pitch letter for a book. Basically just to get a little practice and have a sort of writing sample for applying to other jobs. So I read this book (not so good) and wrote this letter and today I went over it with the publicist (whose name ultimately appears on it) so it can be sent out next week. Among the many silly changes like loading up the first sentence with participals and adding the phrase "ensued upon a freight train," was the completely erroneous decision to change "She expertly employs the first person..." to "Expertly, she employs the first person..." WHY????? In what way does that make anything clearer? Why would you take an adverb away from the verb it modifies? It's just senseless!

Live From the Apple Store Soho, Part 2

Poor computer, hard drive fractured to nothingness, for so long repeating dreams of warm California sun streaming through the window of a computer lab as capable, screw-driver wielding fingers put its insides right. And it was not meant to be. Little Apple will remain in New York and might be ready as soon as tomorrow (or later tonight when I have no intention of going back to Manhattan). So now I wait. For those keeping track this is my second Mac to need a hard drive replaced (rewind to September of 2001, a month after receiving my first Mac laptop). I am not deterred though. I will continue my fifteen years of brand loyalty.

Look out for lots more of me using my computer in the future!

Not Dead Yet, A new Haircut

So my computer is metaphorically hanging from a cliff with all but the index, middle and ring fingers of its right hand broken, but still it's working a little bit. I have logged no fewer than 100 minutes with Apple Care (all during prime, daytime, costing me money hours because you can't even get past the muzak on nights and weekends). Still they have not told me they will take it away to be fixed. I will try once more in a few minutes and if they don't concede I am going to chain myself to the glass cube at their fifth avenue store with "Apple DOESN'T Care" written across my naked body.

In more positive and totally unrelated news, I got a haircut today. For the last several weeks a six inch by six inch dread lock formed in the back of my hair daily, so I knew it was time. I am pretty thrilled really. After explaining to my stylist that I didn't even own a blow dryer let alone a diffuser attachment for it, she showed me how to achieve this "sexy" curly/straight combo do without too much work. And also gave me some good tips on my increasingly embarrassing dry scalp. So here it is. What do you think?

Check It Out

So I guess I am not really so good at music. You know, I like it, I just don't know so much about it or how to find stuff I like. I rarely even remember to listen to it. But I heard this song today and it's really good. And there's a hilarious video. So enjoy!

Computer Hell

So maybe you remember two weeks ago when my computer was in mortal peril, threatened by some malignant and all-consuming disk error? After performing three hours of symbolic surgery I thought our problems were over. How naive! The freezing, stalling, restarting cycle has continued. Today the disk utility said:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

Terrible! "Invalid," "failure" and "repair" all seem like the sorts of things you don't want your disks to do or need. Greg and Brian (and Brian's girlfriend Marissa) are all very knowledgeable computer types and they saw the way my computer was working during my lunch shift at Aroma today and said it was absolutely super serious. So now I am on a fifteen minute wait line with Apple Care Support services since going to the Apple Store on a Friday during the holiday shopping season would be like entering the gates of hell. I am pretty sure this is going to end with my needing to send poor little computer to California for intensive Apple Care.

In some ways I guess this is perfect timing, the last day of my month long pledge to post everyday. I don't think such a commitment would be possible without a personal computer. But I really had planned to continue. Because eventhough no one ever really comments or particularly reads what I write, I really like it. Even though it's something so small, creating a product (a post in my case) everyday is very fulfilling. So come back, dear readers! Once this crazy computer problem is fixed it should be an awesome December on Eating Pie Elsewhere.

Alert!: Blog Attack!

I was just reading the internet when I happened upon a fascinating comment by a person with an eerily familiar name:

"November 26th,
2007
11:43 am

Is this news or editorial? I hope the latter, but it’s VERY BAD JOURNALISM to not indicate one or the other.

Now in terms of accuracy…

The AP reported 6 incidences in the US AND Cananda, not just the US as you imply. Calling the Taser ad campaign “weird” is editorializing. And finally, Taser agrees with AI’s finding that more intensive training is needed, but you brush it off as though it’s lip service (”more easily said than done”).

And I’m sort of unclear as to why Taser’s own site would use the word “torture” on their site. It’s an advertising site, why would they want to advertise it could be used as a “torture” device? Is that what you’d prefer?

I have mixed feelings about the Taser — I wish there were better 3rd party studies, and don’t feel I can make an informed decision without that. But this article just sparks as anti-Taser propaganda, and I find that an irresponsible use of your position as a journalist.

-Pie


Thanks for that correction — it is six all together. And Taser’s Web site addresses much of the criticism against its weapons, but not the torture question. That was the point. –Mike

— Posted by EatingPie"

Fucking Crazy, right??? What to do now? Do I continue the thread? Is this a subvert, Interwebbed overture of love? My mind is racing with possiblilites...

Weighing In: New Schedules

Oh but I work so hard! It is late, I know. But forgive me, dear internet! I am simply on a different time table than other people.

You know how people talk about how Thursday is the new Friday or even Monday is the new Wednesday (a completely meaningless proposition which more than one person has told me of)? Basically there are so many reasons to perceive your week as other than the norm. But when it comes right down to it, everyone has a different week. Some people party hardest on Thursdays and spend the rest of the weekend chilling. Some people wake up early on Saturdays and Sundays to go on adventures or shopping or to the moon. (Can you tell that I have no idea what goes on in the morning hours on weekends?)

In the immortal words of a t-shirt Ryan Runstadler once bought at the Gap and later gave to me: Time is an invention. And if you aren't ready to accept that, than at least admit that the construction of the week is an invention. And a shoddy one at that. It seems like a nice idea that everyone would be able to work and rest at the same time, but it's not plausible in modern society. Who would serve us brunch? Who would pour us drinks and sell us movie tickets? Who would pump our stomachs of alcohol and other toxins?

Wednesday Cooking Diary: Chili

Chili is absolutely the easiest thing to cook. Ben, my roommate when I was nineteen taught me how to make it. I am pretty sure that his dad just told him over the phone to dump a bunch of cans into a pot and cook it with chili powder. Over the course of that year, when I was as poor as I ever plan to be, we tried putting lots of different things into the pot. Mostly it always tastes good, but now I have settled on a pretty good method:

-I start with a small yellow onion and three medium sized garlic cloves, all diced.

-I saute this with a pound of ground turkey until there aren't any pink parts left (this is a post-Philly addition. I could not afford luxuries like ground turkey that year).

-I add some diced up green pepper, a little bit of red bell pepper (little sweetness, little color), a can of whole kernel corn, a can of beans (kidney tonight, but often black) and a large can of diced tomatoes in juice (not with basil). Sometimes I add some diced jalepeno. HEAT!

-Add three heavy dashes of cumin, a dash of cinnamon, three heavy dashes of chili powder... When I want it spicy, I do some cayenne. Longer cooking time is better for maximizing flavor, so tonight it's going to simmer for close to an hour.

My favorite thing with chili is cornbread and so I often do the Jiffy boxed kind. It's really tasty, really easy. Which is good because I am so tired.

There's not real cooking time necessary on this. You want it to be soft, you want it to be flavorful.

Recommendations:

1) Goulash night at Cafe Steinhof: What a deal! Every Monday this Austrian restaurant in Park Slope serves generous bowls of goulash for only six bucks. They also have fried trout for same price but it's a little less reliable. Also they have Gaffel Kolsch on tap and I think that's one of my favorite beers ever. It's on the corner of 14th St. and 7th Ave.

2)No Country for Old Men: I admit that I covered my eyes a lot, but the movie is really great. It's very suspenseful and has an awesome ending, but the performances are really worth going for. Also, wide angle lenses never looked so good.

3)The Time of the Wolf: This movie is intensely tense if that even means anything. The director, Michael Haneke is incredibly adept at creating a narrative with convincing characters but not so much extra stuff that you get bogged down in the details. There's a really interesting analysis of his work in last month's Harper's. Also the young woman who plays the daughter is incredibly good and nuanced and beyond her years as they say. It's really worth seeing.

Friends!

Becca arrived in New York a couple hours ago and will be staying through Thursday or Friday morning. This is really thrilling since she normally lives clear across the country and is visiting for the first time since I started living with Richard. I'll be working lots as I normally do on Tuesday through Thursdays, but it's still going to be very exciting. I even took Wednesday night off to hang out. Let this be a lesson to all of you far away friends. I love guests. Come visit!

Weighing In On: Guitar Hero

Is not so great, actually.

Other things that aren't so great are bong hits and staying up until five in the morning eating stuffing and pie.

This weekend has left me exhausted.