One Uncontrollable Urge

Best Books of 2011

2012-01-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

According to GoodReads, I read FORTY books this year! Woo-hoo. I think that's pretty good for a working girl with no summer and winter vacation--although, that being said, I read a lot more throughout the year now that I don't have hundreds of pages of school reading to do a week.

Some of my favorites

Non-fiction
#1 Unbroken. I gave this to my parents for Christmas. I have flashbacks of this book all the time.
#2 Shadow Divers - Scuba divers exploring an extremely dangerous, deep U-Boat wreck off the American coast.
Isaac's Storm - About a devastating hurricane in Galveston, Texas, that the fairly new National Weather service failed to predict.
What the Dog Saw - collection of Malcolm Gladwell essays

Best Fiction
#1 What Alice Forgot - Laura, I know you don't read fiction but you should read this. It's stunning and poignant and brought me to tears several times. And it describes relationships and life stages with such accuracy. If this weren't on such a girly subject it would be winning a lot more awards.
#2 Cutting for Stone - Took awhile to get into and only really got into it the second time I picked it up. But once you're involved, it is amazing. And there are NO other authors writing books like this right now - about Indian doctors working in Ethiopia in the '60s (at first) and the dictators and wars and struggles there. I love medical stuff and to hear a surgeon writing about this stuff not as a dry medical text but as a talented author? With the ability to talk about the emotions of the surgeon (fear, accomplishment, athletic prowess, grief, hope), the details of the operation? The human body described as only someone who has actually been inside the body can? Whoa, whoa, whoa.
The Namesake
The Hunger Games trilogy - LOVE!
Freedom
Room

Back from South of the Border!

2011-12-05T06:57:00.001-08:00

E & I got back on Tuesday from Mexico. The trip was great! Like any of our trips, it had its ups and downs, but it was great to explore another area. Having been to Mexico before, the trip didn't feel as foreign as going to Costa Rica or Panama. However, the Yucatan region is great (except for the water...why can Costa Rica and Panama have clean water but the Yucatan fails so miserably when there is WAY more tourism in that area? Apparently the hotel zone in Cancun is okay but we didn't venture there). What I liked best (and why I really recommend the area!) is that it has all the awesomeness of a beach vacation along with cenotes, underground sinkhold caves, along with Mayan ruins. We also had some great snorkeling, which you don't really get on the Pacific side.

A few highlights:

Cabanas La Conchita in Tulum.

This hotel was amazing! I booked it last minute after our original reservation was cancelled because the hotel was subject to a land grab (shady titles are apparently the norm in the region). Miraculously, the BEST cabana was available, #1. It was the only one that had a full ocean view. We fell asleep to the sound of the waves every night underneath a mosquito net. It was wonderful! Electricity is also in short supply in the area (ours was solar-powered) so we only had power from 5pm-10pm. It was actually really cool to live that way! We would have a last swim right before the sun went down around 5, shower, then go get dinner. We would come back, look at the stars, then go to bed right around when the lights went out. Then at 6am or so, the light starts streaming in and you start to stir. Maybe by 7 you get out of bed, have a morning swim, relax, and then have the delicious, included breakfast at 8. I am NOT a morning person so it was really cool to see how naturally your body responds to the light and dark if you don't have electricity or TV to stimulate you after hours. We also stayed there during a new moon, so the stars were super bright. E brought out his Android and we used Google Sky to identify the constellations. It was magical. Nice, quiet beach.

We ended up changing our plans and coming back to the area for the last two nights. The water was exceptionally calm, eventually like glass. When we had been there before the waves were extremely strong, full of seaweed, and actually a bit intimidating. I went boogie boarding on this beach that was now wave-free! I liked being able to experience the different moods of the same ocean.

It ended up being really worth it to come back to the Cabanas (even though we didn't get as good of a cabin the second time) because sea turtles hatched! Even though it's past the season, the hotel manager had kept some nests in coolers waiting for them to hatch. Two nights in a row, we had people stand at the water with flashlights and released the turtles into the ocean. Feeling a little creature like that in my hands was so, so cool. I felt a little guilty because I have been so conditioned not to touch endangered species, etc., before realizing that in this case, I was the "handler," the person in charge of making sure the creature got into the ocean. Some of the turtles starting moving right away toward the ocean. Others were a little stunned and didn't move at all. I was really worried one of them was hurt but it turned out the little one just needed some time to adjust before he started swimming toward the water.

Back to the breakfast--I love fresh-squeezed orange juice, which was served every day at breakfast. All over Mexico, this is considered the norm, not a luxury. It is so delicious. It tastes clean, a little more watery, and it's so refreshing. OJ containers, in contrast, always have a slightly syrupy or more powerful flavor. Even fresh-squeezed in containers doesn't taste the same as Mexican OJ. Mmmm.

Ok, now more briefly:

COBA

My favorite Mayan ruin. More chill than Chichen Itza with some impressive, unrestored sights. We climbed a really high pyramid and biked to all the different sections of the ruins.

XAMACH DOS

In the Si'an Kaan biopreserve, this hotel was in the middle of nowhere. We befriended one guy who had been there a few times before and this really great family, since we were taking all our meals together. And I learned how to play Cribbage! Also, this family was just SO lovely--three gorgeous blond kids, and we celebrated the Mom's 40th birthday. On our last day, the boy comes over to me and I see he's walking with a limp. I say, 'Hey, guy, did you step on something? You okay?' Then his Dad, who's nearby, says 'You want to tell her, or me?' And this boy tells me that he had a stroke when he was in his mommy's belly and it affects how he walk and his eye. I was stunned and had no idea what to say, only that I didn't want to say what I was thinking, which was that he was brave and he's been through a lot. I was worried that it would turn into some patronizing statement when I've never had to deal with anything like that. Instead, I think I said, 'Wow,' and I don't know what else, just processing. And I told his Dad and him I had no idea, that this was the first I noticed. 'He's come a long way,' the Dad said, and that made me feel like I had at least made some kind of appropriate response. Then later tells me the Dad has colon cancer--he had finished chemo and that was part of the reason the family was taking a three-week vacation. It was crazy to see this family, perfect from the outside, was going through so much. It really blew me away.

We also went inland to Merida for a couple nights. We stayed in a lovely hotel but weren't such a big fan of the hot, crowded, diesel-fumed environment of the city. E says "no more Central American cities." We left a day early for Playa del Carmen, which is an hour south of Cancun and supposedly more "European." It was very, very touristy. There is a huge main pedestrian strip with tons of restaurants, bars, and shops, a few avenues away from the beach. It felt like San Diego or something--not Mexcio. E took issue with everyone being all dressed up, in heels etc. He prefers a more chill environment. We checked out and headed down to Tulum instead the next day. On the plus side, we ate breakfast at this French place and probably had the best almond croissant and "manzana tarte" in all of Mexico. After so much Mexican food that was a nice respite.

Another highlight was renting a car! Though it ended up being quite expensive because of all the insurance add-ons (80% of our cost was insurance!), it helped free us from the crowds and made sure we were on no one's schedule but our own. We also went to smaller, more out-of-the-way spots. E was a great driver! I hate the rules now about not letting anyone else drive unless you pay extra--I only drove in the biopreserve, partly so I wouldn't get carsick because the roads are filled with potholes--like it's actually the worst road I've ever been on.

I caught a cold on my way back and missed work Wednesday and Friday--now I'm leaving two Fridays from now for Seattle! Turns out I miss my work Christmas party, but oh well. I have stuff scheduled right now for seven out of the ten worknights (screenings, plays, parties, etc) and probably will end up doing something else too--CRAZY!! The end of the year is coming too fast now!

Favorite Things of Fall

2011-10-02T08:53:00.001-07:00

Weekend breakfasts on the balcony with a fleece on
Unpasteurized pineapple orange ginger juice
Bagels with lox
Getting rid of things! I have a Salvation Army pick-up appointment set for a couple weeks from now, and I can't wait to de-clutter
Cooking over the weekend! Yesterday we made yummy tacos for a couple friends who came over and a giant cheesecake (can't wait to try it!). Today I'm planning on making a butternut squash soup (with leftovers for work lunch) and cranberry nut bread with the first cranberries of the season
When a DJ keeps on playing song after amazing song. I went out spur of the moment last night (after the tacos) and ended up in this scene-y kind of bar that was playing amazing Top 40 mixes. We're talking about mixing Miley Cyus' "Party in the USA" with Biggie, so the song went back and forth between the two for a few minutes. The DJs were so cute and had this little dance they did to a Lady Gaga song. Haven't had that much fun going out in awhile
Having exciting things to look forward to! Including going to Chicago for my cousin's wedding, going to Vermont next weekend, and the Greenwich Village Halloween parade!
"Boardwalk Empire" and Ken Burns' "Prohibition" (starting tonight). I think I may need to shell out for one of those pre-made flapper costumes this year.
Going to see 9/11 memorial today with our state assemblyman.
Happy, lazy weekends
I asked for a raise at work, something I have been chickening out about doing for months
Fall weather that's still warm enough to let you walk home late at night in bar attire without freezing, and not having to carry a heavy winter coat in with you to the bar
Magazines! I am still having my love affair with "New Yorker," and was going through withdrawals when my magazine was four days late. Also "The Atlantic" and "Wired" are so smart and it's nice not to read everything online for once, especially because I don't like screens for any pre-bedtime reading. And again: so, so, so smart and interesting
Mindy Kaling: read this. I can't wait to read her memoir when it comes out!
My boyfriend!

Mountaineering Documentaries

2011-09-08T19:38:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been mentioning to people that I really like mountaineering documentaries. The response is usually a raised eyebrow and laughter. I guess it's a random thing to be enthused about. But it's true, I do. I love reading and watching anything about mountaineering.

I am an exceedingly cautious person. When I go on hikes, I'm always super slow because I have to make sure I have perfect footing before I proceed. I once cried while on top of one of those fake plastic rock climbing things--partly because I was so high up, partly because I couldn't make it to the top. I don't particularly care for heights. I do like scrambling around rocks and things, but again, caution rules the day.

Watching mountaineering documentaries fills me with adrenaline and awe. I totally understand their goal. Some people may think it's crazy to summit these peaks or try a crazier, never-done-before route, but I completely understand their motives. It feels like the most natural desire in the world. As George Mallory (who died on Everest in the 1920s, perhaps after climbing it, but no one knows for sure) said, in response to the question, "Why climb Everest?" "Because I can." We live in a world where every inch of the world has been explored, yet certain peaks and routes have only been conquered by a select few.

Climbing a mountain is about confronting death. When you're at extremely high altitudes, your body dies a little bit every single minute. Your brain does not receive enough oxygen. Your lungs can fill with fluid. You can die from cerebral edema. Your nose, fingers, and toes begin to freeze off. You're pushing your body into this zone where death is inevitable, yet some people escape unscathed. You're confronting your body's evolutionary limits. We're simply not designed to live that high up. On the same note, Nepalese sherpas do in fact have an adaptation that allows them to take in more oxygen at high altitudes, which is fairly new. That doesn't mean they don't die up there, but it's also a window into a place where genetics snap into focus. We are not all born the same. As people climb up Everest, they see dead bodies along the path. The conditions are so extreme, they simply can't be brought down and buried. Instead, they remain frozen mummies that will probably mystify those that find them millenia from now. Everything about life that is glorious and frightening and fragile and awe-inspiring exists when you are up on the mountain.

I wish I had that skill, that confidence. The lack of fear. But I don't. So I like to watch and read these stories and be in awe of these people's accomplishments.

My recent watches (both on Netflix Instant):
Touching the Void: It shows up on "Best Documentaries of all Time" lists. It chronicles a disastrous attempt of a pair to survive after one man breaks his leg while descending. His tale of survival is so incredibly powerful. One thing that really struck me was that he would set tiny goals for himself, like "you have twenty minutes to get to that ridge." I don't think he could have survived without that.
The Wildest Dream: Not as good, but about another Everest attempt interwoven with the story of George Mallory.

Discovery channel's Everest series. I watched this years ago and was utterly riveted
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. This one sparked my interest. In fact, I want to read it again.

I'd love to write some kind of fictional short story about mountaineering, I love it so much, but they say write what you know and I definitely don't know anything more than a spectator about mountaineering!

CSA Update

2011-06-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

For the second year, E & I are doing a CSA (community-supported agriculture). You pay $300 something upfront, and you get fresh fruit, organic vegetables, and cheese (extra) for twenty-something weeks. We were unhappy with how the first one was run, so we switched to the Grand St CSA. We were on the wait list for Grand St. last year, which so far has had more produce, and is closer and more convenient to our apartment. Not only do we have fruits this time, we also have CHEESE. Cheese! They also do one off things, too, so we recently came into a couple quarts of maple syrup that is seriously delicious.

This year we're actually getting vegetables every week (not every other week), which will help with the waste. E was on a business trip in Houston a couple weeks ago, leaving me to cook a head of swiss chard (I made stuffed shells) and eat more lettuce than I ever have in one week in my life--we got two heads of lettuce plus a bag of mixed greens. I hate most bottled salad dressings now that I've started making my own, so I've been making small batches of dressing (so easy, I swear). That way you can have a couple salads with one dressing then move one. I've made a couple viniagrettes, throwing in some fresh herbs, and I am a huge fan of my creamy greek dressing, which I will try to post here soon.

Other things we've done with our vegetables
1. Radishes "the French way, with butter and salt." Meh. I added a Ritz cracker to the mix, but I'm still not a huge radish person.
2. Radishes in fish tacos. Yum! The way radishes were meant to be: In small quantities
3. Swiss chard with caramelized onions in a calzone. So loved! We even figured out a way to cook the stems this time!
4. Salads with fruit, cheese, and nuts. These are the best.

5.Garlic Scape Dip. I actually kind of screwed up this recipe this time, after two times with great success last year. I used WAY more scapes than I should have (they were bigger than the ones from last year, and I just plain added more.) I'm going to buy some more white beans to try to save it from its aggressive garlickiness.
6. Rhubarb compote. We kind of roughly used this recipe, adding some frozen strawberries, mango nectar instead of orange juice, and just a tablespoon of sugar (we had less rhubarb). So yum.

E is flying to LA today for ANOTHER last-minute business trip. I like that he's all important at work and all, but I'm going to be so lonely!! And I'm going to have to eat all the vegetables!! My plan is for him to accrue enough frequent flyer miles to takes us somewhere awesome.

First it was 100 degrees, now it's 70 degrees

2011-06-14T12:16:00.001-07:00

With the boyfriend out of town for a business trip and Phish, I had the apartment to myself for a week. Of course, he had to leave three hours after we returned home from a camping trip, so I had to unpack two coolers and cram this random food in our fridge, put away all the camping gear, stinky clothes, etc. I did all of this ASAP because I really like making the apartment super clean whenever he is gone. Then if there are dirty dishes in the sink I have no one to complain to but myself. I also like to bleach things into shiny whiteness. Yeah, that’s what I do when my boyfriend’s out of town. Clean & bleach!

I had a great weekend with lots of friend sightings. I feel like post-college, a lot of interacting is one-on-one meet ups for coffee, dinner, drinks, movies etc. Getting multiple people together for these activities is much more difficult, but ultimately more fun.

On Friday, one my friends hosted a wine & cheese tasting party. I brought 18-month-old beemster (try it! You’ll like it!) and 2-year-old cheddar. J and her boyfriend J made homemade mead and goat cheese, which was a lot of fun to try, especially with the cheese seasoned with herbs, sun-dried tomatoes, etc. As the night progressed, the wine somehow tasted better and better (imagine that). I liked that everyone contributed but it didn’t have a potluck feel to it, it was just everyone introducing something that they really liked and wanted to share. A great party idea! And I have some new wines to try.

Saturday night I went out with four friends, both close and acquaintances. We went to a comedy show for SketchFestNYC, which was terrible. But the show cost no more than a glass of nice wine, so whatever. We all had a sense of humor about the lack of humor. Before and after the show we had some great conversations. We ended up talking a lot about next life stages, like marriage, how would you balance work and having children, and how male anatomy is so weird. I didn't drink too much, but did notice I wasn't walking completely straight as I made my way home. And I discovered a new drink, the French Martini. It’s Chambord, pineapple juice, and vodka. Not too sweet and I like it way better than a cosmo, which I rarely order. I actually have some Chambord at home so I think now I will have to use it more.

I also tried to work out a decent amount this weekend. I had a personal training appointment (included as part of a gym deal) and I asked her to measure my body fat with the caliper test at the end. The results were depressing. I still don’t know if I believe they’re true. Don’t they need to be adjusted for my height/frame etc? I’m in denial! It’s frustrating because I am active, but the trainer made references about “getting back into shape” etc. She could have said that just because I had recently joined the gym, but I felt that also reflected her judgment of my performance. In truth, I COULD do everything she asked me too (minus collapsing after holding plank), so I shouldn’t beat myself up too much. I can definitely run more to get that intense cardio, and I also think I will be hitting free weights more frequently, and working towards holding a plank for a minute to protect my back. But I feel kind of fatalistic. I do weigh myself pretty regularly and track it in Google Calendar. I’ve done that since 2006, and my weight has remained remarkably stable. That includes times I sat on my ass all the time and other times that I was really working on staying active and watching what I ate. Of course, the scale can't distinguish between fat and muscle, and there have been times my body was more tight than others, but it still pretty much weighed the same. I find it hard to believe that I could lose 20 pounds (still a normal weight for my height), or even be able to maintain a 10 pound loss. I certainly never have been able to even get to that point before.

What I am proud of is that I bike/walk to work, which makes me automatically more active than a lot of people. Any exercise on top of that just makes me feel that much better. I’m also proud that I can eat whatever I want without guilt-tripping myself. That used to be a big thing. I don’t binge eat anymore. Once I got to three or four cookies, it used to just be a shame spiral, and I would go crazy, but sweets just don’t have that effect on my anymore. I wonder about that sometimes. Do sweets just not taste that good anymore? I think they don’t provide as much emotional satisfaction as they used to. I don’t feel like I have more self-control, I just feel that sweets don’t taste overwhelmingly good anymore. There are certain things that I still have trouble controlling my intake of, mainly homemade cookies, but even then I don’t overindulge to an insane amount. That makes me really happy. So why haven’t the numbers on the scale gone down?

Sunday I played tennis with one of Eric’s friends that I play with regularly. We’re a good match. He’s just slightly better than me. For tennis, you want to be with someone who hits just a little bit harder than you, so you can slam it right back at them. I was sore from the day before, but my forehand was kicking butt. I think the arm weights helped with that, another reason for me to lift more regularly. Maybe I’ll buy some free weights for home. I’m annoyed because New York City parks DOUBLED the price to play tennis this year. It used to be $7 per person for one hour of tennis. Now it’s $15—so $30 for two people to play for an hour. Really? I try to think to myself, that’s just the price of a yoga class, and it’s good for you, but it still makes me grumpy. I mean, this is the city parks. Aren’t they supposed to be super affordable for regular folk?

This weekend I’m looking forward to hanging out in the city with my boyfriend and making pancakes. Yeah! I’m also planning on working on writing short fiction, and even submitting it to be published. I’ve been inspired by a friend and I think it’s time I dip my toe into some unfamiliar waters.

An inspiring story

2011-05-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm very struck by this New York Magazine article about a "a young doctor, not even prominent at his own hospital, who by his own admission knew next to nothing about AIDS, doing something never done before." He cured AIDS in one of his patients who had lukemia by giving him a bone marrow transplant. The donor had a genetic mutation that was passed on to the man, making him resistant to AIDS. He was turned down from conferences and rejected from the leading medical journals. He was so outside of the AIDS research group nobody listened to what he had to say. People who lived and breathed AIDS research also just didn't think a "cure" was plausible. They had been so trained by their failures they didn't go down certain lines of inquiry anymore.

Being part of the in-group means learning all the things you can't do. Outsiders don't have to think outside the box. They haven't been taught to see the box.

In both of my jobs, I've experienced something like this. A lot of the processes or tasks seem superfluous, unnecessary, redundant, time-consuming, wasteful. You have to be patient, because sometimes the logic for these tasks is hidden. But once you do them for awhile, you begin to ossify. We really need this database! You have to organize the document like that! In my advertising job, especially, doing things differently got me into nothing but trouble. And when you do things your way, you have to take 100% responsibility for any failure, and must defend yourself against suspicion and skepticism all the time.

History is littered with the tales of thinkers whose inventions, theories, and discoveries were ignored in their time. Thirty or a hundred years later, someone else discovers the same thing, but this time the world takes notice.

It's not enough to just have a great idea. You have to be in a position of power. You have to have influence. Maybe people will pay attention eventually, in the case of this doctor. But maybe they won't.

Basking like a lizard in 87+ degree weather

2011-05-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

Over Memorial Day weekend, Eric left for Bethel for three nights of Phish concerts. I'm a little resentful that Phish insists on all these concerts over three-day weekends. Eric is definitely going to one over Fourth of July, and may go to one that requires a plane ticket over Labor Day.

However, I've kept myself occupied and actually looked forward to some "me" time. I made a whole list of things to do and, um, I haven't checked a ton off my list, but that's fine, because it means I've been busy. I also didn't watch TV, just two movies (kind of my job?), so I'm proud of myself for that. Watching crap TV while alone is depressing.

On Friday afternoon (we got out a bit early) I tried this awesome burrito place called Downtown Bakery. It was 3pm and I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I ate the whole thing, which of course made me stomach rebel about 45 minutes later. I went for a run in the evening, and was proud because my maximum pulse rate was about 160. It was 240 when I first went for a run 5 weeks ago. However, my runner's high was not as intense. I love me a good runner's high. If they could bottle some of my runner's highs I'm pretty sure they would be a class I controlled substance. It's this very relaxing, mellowing (yet also invigorating) whole body high. It can make me feel a little giddy afterwards and share-y. I want to shout from the rooftops how good I feel. No one else mentions this, so I'll go out and say it. It feels different than an orgasm--maybe not as intense--but it lasts and lasts and lasts. So that's what I have to say about runner's highs. Apparently, the Internet says I am not alone.

Saturday was my busy day
10:30 wake up
12-1:30 yoga. holy cow this class kicked my ass. That part specifically was quite sore the next day.
2:30 laser hair removal consultation. If you have pale skin and dark hair, you should do it! Unfortunately, I'm not the best candidate (and can't do my bikini area) because my hair is too light. I'm in between doing my underarms and this random patch of hair that grows on my left hip. It actually hurt A LOT when they did the test patch on my underarm, so I think the pain might be a factor.
3 Met Anna and went to Epistrophy, this cute French cafe, and shared dishes with plenty of cheese and tomato sauce (baked eggs and an eggplant thing) and a carafe of red wine. It was a nice afternoon, and the place was so disorganized we had to ask for our check like three times. But that's fine, because we spent over two hours there
8:30pm Rooftop Films! I'm doing a piece on them for work. The screening was at the top floor of a school--one of the ones with a rooftop basketball court that's caged in. It was a great place to see a movie.
11pm Afterparty at Fontana's. The producer of the film graduated a year behind me so it was fun to hear her adventures as a filmmaker.

Sunday I was inexplicably exhausted and groggy all day. I finally rallied around 6pm, when I sat and read in the East River Park, which was cool and gorgeous. I finished the Hunger Games trilogy, though the third book was not my favorite. Too much to wrap together. It also had that Harry Potter syndrome where they end up in the hospital after EVERY battle/altercation. Way too much to draw together in one book.

Today, I went to another yoga class (ok, when am I going to start seeing results? No inches lost, no weight loss. maybe a tiny bit more toned-looking?). I made this awesome healthy banana bread recipe for breakfasts and snacks this week, and now I'm drinking kombucha and writing this.

Next weekend--Mountain Jam!
Today I did another yoga class (ok, when am I going to startseeing ru

A Weekend in New Hampshire

2011-05-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Eric always complains that I don’t like hiking. Actually, I just don’t like boring hiking. I like scenery. I like vistas. I like crossing small streams and figuring out my footing over rocks. I like waterfalls. New Hampshire, thankfully, has all that.

On Friday, we left work a bit early and I took the PATH train to New Jersey to pick up our rental car, a minivan (more on that later). The trip was over six hours, including an hour break for thai food. We passed right by the exit to Wesleyan, so I gave my standard alumni shout-out.

I have to say, I love traveling with smartphones. The thai place we found, which was pretty good and so quiet and peaceful, was over two miles away from the highway. We would have been eating at Denny’s if we hadn’t had Yelp and Google Maps. The hotel the first night, a Red Roof Inn, was not my favorite. A lot of the places were sold out for some reason, and at this point it was 11:30pm. I pouted and couldn’t sleep because of those thin comforters they have in cheap hotels. It was also just a little bit cheaper than the much nicer place we had reservations for Saturday and Sunday night. Eric refused to eat the free continental breakfast in the morning.

However, that turned out to be a good thing because we found this awesome pancake place further North on our route. Pretty much everything in this small skiing town was shut down, except for this restaurant, which was packed. It had a cute little train going around that captivated all the little kids in the restaurant, one of those things that makes me almost excited to have children, until I see the little rascal clinging to his mother and running around the restaurant like a wee madman.

The weather was about as nice as it was going to get, so we went up to Mt Washington. It’s the tallest mountain on the East Coast, the site of the highest wind speed ever recorded, and the first “attraction” on the east coast. You have to pay $30 something for the toll road up to the top, which comes with a cheesy yet wonderful audio CD to play in your car. We stopped and walked around at various points. It was really cool to enter the alpine zone. The trees get smaller and smaller until there are flattened, twisted conifer vines, basically. Up top was totally covered in fog. I brought my ski jacket, gloves, and a hat, which I put on at the top. It’s that cold. On the way down we hiked off the road and perched on a rock for awhile that was basically on a cliff. We tried to take pictures but they just couldn’t capture the depth and scale of what we were experiencing.

We stayed at the Bretton Arms Inn, which is on the ground and part of the Mount Washington Resort. The Victorian-era hotel is a vestige of the days when people would spend their whole summers at one hotel. Fifty trains arrived a day. It was a huge hotspot. A lot of these places have gone away, mainly due to the arrival of plane travel. Fun fact!

The hotel was absolutely gorgeous. We ate the first night in the formal dining room. Neither of us had realized the environment was so formal. I brought a new dress that I had been dying to wear, but Eric was in his cargos. I didn’t want to eat at the other restaurants so I made him borrow a suit jacket so he could eat in the formal area. Dinner was wonderful. We sat right by the window, had that exceptional service that makes you pull out all the manners you learned from your mother, and I now have a new favorite dish: osso bucco. After dinner, Eric treated me to one dance on the dance floor. We danced alone in front of the three-piece band. Just a little two-step. He turned bright red and it was so cute. He’s actually expressed interest in dancing lessons, so I need to take advantage of that. I’m not a great dancer myself, but I’ve learned that confidence goes a long way, and I really enjoy dancing with someone that loves me. No sweaty palms!

Sunday it rained all day, as forecast, so we treated ourselves to a hotel day. We had brunch buffet in the formal dining room again, it was one of those crazy Mother’s Day-level brunches. We ate a lot of lox. Then we checked out the spa, since we had made appointments for a couples’ massage later that day. I’ve only been to a true spa once, and didn’t really get the full experience. The male and female concierges each gave us separate tours, and we met briefly in the couples lounge. I went back out after changing, and Eric was nowhere to be found. I went back and used the steam room for a minutes, then checked. No Eric. Did more steam room. No Eric. Finally, I go out and see him. He had shaved and showered, commenting that there’s not usually all that stuff for him to use. After going to a formal tea in the afternoon (so stuffed by that point after breakfast and tea!), we came back for our massage. It was incredible. I definitely want to get more massages. My mom had a bunch of them covered by insurance after she got a concussion in a fender-bender (ok, not a good reason to get free massages), but I hear Washington is a massage-positive state. I would love to get medical massages for my back problems. I asked for a deep tissue massage, which left me a bit sore the next day, but I think it worked out some of my perma-kinks.

On Monday it finally stopped raining and we went on a couple of hikes in the White Mountain National Forest before we headed back to NYC. The first one was advertised as “Twenty Minutes to the Waterfall,” and it took a bit longer, but it was beautiful. We could see the trail markings on the other side of the waterfall, but there was no way you could get across at this time of the year, with all the spring snow melting. Then we headed down to the river, where we saw people canoeing and rafting down the river in wetsuits. They do this every May. Eric and I decided we will go rafting together—he’s done it before but I haven’t.

At this point Eric thought I wanted to head back to the car and go home, but no I didn’t! I turned onto a trail and started hiking. It turned out to run uphill along a stream/waterfall. We had the best time hiking up there, which led us to believe that there are only good trails in New Hampshire. There were lots of rocksteps and tree roots, and different types of waterfalls. We finally ended up turning back at a break in the trail.

Then, we got around to the whole purpose of the trip, and why we rented a minivan. The boxes. About a decade ago, Eric left ten boxes of stuff at his ex-girlfriend’s parents’ house before he moved to Portland, Oregon. Seriously. The parents were really nice, and I didn’t feel that awkward, thankfully, even though I was wondering if they were judging me against her. We started to go through them and there’s lots of duplicate kitchen stuff, for example. This morning Eric spotted a trio of microwave cookbooks. Yeah, there’s some great stuff in those boxes.

It was so nice to take a three-day weekend, and now that I have more vacation time this is something we’ll plan to do a couple more times this summer. Relaxed and refreshed! Also, we always tend to get closer during a trip together, but I think now I really understand what old married couples mean when they go away for a weekend to reconnect. The weekend was all about spending time with each other away from our usual distractions, and I felt so much more in sync with my partner by the end. Going to New Hampshire made me realize there are many, many more destinations to explore on the East Coast.

Ping Pong and Green Smoothies

2011-05-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

This week went by pretty quickly, and with my boyfriend already tuckered out in bed, I thought I'd share.

THE PING PONG STORY
While biking home, I see people playing ping pong through the chain link fence in a pretty neglected park by our apartment. I realize that Eric has a couple of ping pong paddles lying around.

I go on Amazon and purchase some ping pong balls (they sell a lot of 300-packs for beer pong...). Tonight, after dinner we decide to move around a bit and play some pong. It was fabulous. We were out there for about forty minutes. We realized that was the longest either of us had been outside that day. It's kind of pathetic, especially because I consider myself to be a lot more outdoorsy since I bike to and from work (15 min each way) and generally try to leave the office to walk around or run an errand at lunchtime. It felt old-fashioned, like when I was a kid and would race to go outside and play after dinner, especially during warm summer nights.

I beat Eric two games to one. I'm pretty competitive, but I had an advantage since I play tennis (I think anyway). I like that we're not too unevenly matched. Success! Hopefully I can rope some other friends into playing or turn it into a drinking game sometime.

GREEN SMOOTHIES
I make fruit smoothies semi-regularly with my immersion blender. I have it down to a science
1) frozen fruit from whole foods
2) frozen bananas--I slice up all extra, overripe bananas and put them in the freezer for this use
3) yogurt
4) milk or fruit juice to thin

However, I feel like they're not as filling as, say, having some yogurt and berries and actually chewing everything. They can also be pretty sweet. I've been seeing a lot of green juices around lately, usually priced at some insane level like $7 or $9.50, so I thought I'd try to make my own at home. Tonight I made a kale smoothie as follows
1) As many leaves of kale (de-stemmed) as I could fit into my pyrex measuring cup
2)frozen banana + frozen strawberry
3)milk

It was surprisingly good, just a little bit of vegetal bitterness. As Eric said, after trying it reluctantly, "It could hold a lot more kale."

Our CSA starts up in three weeks (yay!) so I think green smoothies will be a good way for us to quickly go through perishable vegetables. Last year we got into kale chips to go through all the kale, but this year I'm hoping we can add smoothies to our "easy ways to eat kale" repertoire. A sidenote: I'm all about fiber, but I suspect the kale is behind some major intestinal rumblings this evening. Ironically, when I googled this I came across a website recommending you make raw vegetables more "digestible" was to make a green smoothie. Yeah, right...

Anyway, the real way to make an awesome smoothie is to have a high-end vitamix or whatever but I told Eric to check out craigslist and I think we're going to get a $200 for $50. Nice!

Oh man..

2011-04-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

After reading this article on Gawker, I scrolled over to McNaughton's website, where I found a number of offensive pictures.

Like the one of Obama stepping on the constitution.

And Via Dolorosa (above), in which a modern American businessman stands front and center next to Jesus. F*** Mother Teresa, Jefferson, etc. They're in the background. I imagine this would be the perfect picture to hang in a douche-y businessman's office.

This one is (above) more complicated (um, and even BYU finds it offensive and is taking it down?). He has a female businesswoman on the left "the good side," but a Mr. Hollywood and liberal reporter on the right (all figures that could represent me). It's very Fox News-y, gives me my standard liberal gag reflex, but the viewpoints he expresses reveal some common ground between liberals and conservatives. Although, now that I think about it--why is it the female businesswoman's responsibility to "preserve conservative values?" Because she is the one that is deviating from the traditional to work out of home?

It's weird to see a modern painter using the highly symbolic style popular hundreds of years ago, where every person actually represented something. He's not really that good of a painter, but apparently these things sell like crazy.

Lazy Weekend

2011-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went camping for a night in New Jersey in 40ish degree weather with a deflated air mattress. Although it was nice to see trees and birds, I was glad to have a more relaxing weekend.

Friday night E & I met up after work at Ten Bells, a place I've been wanting to try for their "oyster happy hour," where the oysters are only $1. The oysters on the half shell were actually quite good, but they did have some grit in them and were too salty. E wanted to leave ASAP. So we did. I've heard so many raves about this place, but it really is overpriced...$1 oysters are nice but when the cheapest glass of wine is $9...I mean come on, it doesn't really even itself out.

We ended up going just next door to Barrio Chino, a fantastic Mexican restaurant I had my 24th birthday party at with several friends. Except for 8+ people, they don't take reservations, so it's usually tough to eat at, since there are maybe 30 seats...one time E and I put our name down and they called when we were paying the bill at the restaurant we ended up going to. So, anyway, we were able to sit right down since it was so early..like 6:15-6:30 on Friday. They have amazing cocktails, so I made E get a jalapeno grapefruit margarita. I wanted him to have the jabanero one but the waitress said that would be mean! I tried an elderflower lime one, which was nice, and later we had a strawberry vanilla one, which would have been better before the meal. Great enchiladas verde and I had some kind of stuffed chile with this awesome ground meat that had, apparently, pears and dried fruit in it, though I couldn't see it. Oh, and we had shrimp tostadas as an appetizer. I'm kind of meh on shrimp, mainly because you always seem to get these flaccid, flavorless things. Small yet firm and full of flavor, these shrimp were the shrimp I wish I could eat more regularly.

Saturday, we tried to make a dutch baby, a kind of puffy pancake, but it was a bit of a fail. The edges were nice and puffy but the middle was just thick and yucky.

I decided to go on a run for the first time in months. It was a huge success! I was able to run at a slow pace comfortably for about 10-12 minutes (I had only planned on going on a 20-minute run total to warm myself up). I then did some interval/sprint training. I did a couple walk/sprints, then a walk/build, then wound down with some slow run/walk intervals. I read a year ago that it's actually better to WALK for part of your run if you pair it up with sprints and builds, and I think it makes sense. After all, we used to do that in swimming all the time. It also makes the run more interesting, and I got my heart rate up really high (um, over 200? I think that means I still need to get in better shape, apparently the "target" is 165 for a 26-year-old). Plus, I ran for 32 minutes, 10 minutes more than I wanted to ease myself into. Today, my inner thighs are way sore but I feel more refreshed and energized.

That afternoon we did our Whole Foods trip in the rain on our bikes, leading me to release a primal scream on the way back when there was so much rain blowing in my face and some of these crazy 30mph winds that seem to be the norm for NYC (and are much worse when you're biking into them..walking the wind is slightly more tolerable). We filled up our growler, and I'm enjoying the beer from it right now.

While I was doing my run, Eric went to Marlow & Daughters, a butcher shop across the Williamsburg Bridge. He got a whole chicken, some lamb for Sunday, house-cured bacon, and some sausages they gave him to try. I love local butchers! Though I was trying to start a health kick (the run and all), he insisted on fried chicken (another America's Test Kitchen recipe), and it was fantastic. Damn, I never knew I liked fried chicken til I met this man! Earlier in the week, pre-health kick (and reading this stupid (as in probably right) Magazine article, "Is Sugar Toxic?"), I had expressed interest in making blueperry pie, so we did that. The crust had two sticks of butter (for top and bottom crust), but actually I added only 2 tsp of sugar to the crust and 1/2 cup to the blueberry filling, so it was naturally sweet, at least. I was so full of chicken, but I made room for pie, with some of my favorite vanilla gelato to make it a la mode. Seriously, is my whole life preparing for meals and eating? I blame my boyfriend.

We watched Vicky Cristina Barcleona, which I had been meaning to see forever. It was nice, light, and a little sexy. Go Woody Allen.

Today we traipsed over the Williamsburg Bridge on bike, checked out Marlow & Daughters, and biked though W-Burg. The hood has changed so much in a few years, and not for the better. The main drag, Bedford Ave., was totally overcrowded with people. The side streets are still more deserted, a mix of broken down abandoned warehouses and spanking new condos (some of which are unfinished thanks to the housing crash). The best places are kind of on the edges and away from the main drags, but that makes them a little harder to discover. There's an uptick in the amount of baby carriages, and the neighborhood isn't quite as uniformly hipster anymore, but it's just so darn young. It's like a college/grad school campus. It lacks diversity when it comes to age. Also, when I come to W-Burg I expect to pay a little less for dinner/drinks. A lot of places make good on that, but there are some places that charge Manhatten prices..that SHOULDN'T. E says I think about money too much. But what can I say, it's who I am!

Tonight I made a healthy-ish banana bread from a Moosewood cookbook, and we're having lamb and fingerling potatoes. I think it will be a good night.

Oh, and last night I finished Three Cups of Tea, which is about an ex-mountain climbing guy building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Today, I find out "60 Minutes" is doing an expose on him, saying he's a liar. Just in time, right?

Baaabies

2011-03-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I want to have babies so I can experiment on them.

From Slate:
"Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School
New research shows why teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire."

For the record, I went to a Montessori preschool and have fond but vague memories of it. There were different "stations" and areas where you could explore different things on your own schedule. For example, you could pull out a tray and practice pouring purple-dyed water from a pitcher into a glass and back, and a sponge to clean up any messes you made. I remember doing that one a lot--for some reason it entertained me. As an adult, I appreciate the fact that it taught hand-eye coordination, a basic skill that could be used at home (pouring milk), and that it taught independence. You could do it "all by myself," which also meant you were responsible for cleaning up your messes.

There were also letter tracing things. And we would have circle time to sing and do things together, like sing "Farmer in the Dell." But what I remember most is all those trays with different activities contained within. One last thing: We all put on our coats by ourselves using this foolproof preschooler method. The coat would be placed upside down on the floor. We would put each arm in our coat and then flip it over our heads, thus avoiding that "I can't find the spot for my other arm" problem that little kiddies have.

Two-year anniversary!

2011-02-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, E & I celebrated two years together. Leading up to the anniversary, I felt more anxious than usual about our relationship--pretty much how I felt last year, though I think I handled it better. Last year, I was so anxious to get that "one year" mark under my belt. I wanted the intensity of my feelings to be matched by a history together that was more quantifiable, so passing the one year mark meant a lot to me. "We've been together for a year" means something to people.

The whole weekend was relaxed and we spend all of it together, with the exception of a "Chocolate & Spice" party we went to on Saturday night. Sunday we had brunch at Yuca Bar, where I had some awesome eggs benedict on arepas with cilantro hollandaise. Eric & I rarely (i.e. never) do brunch together, so this was a nice change of pace. We're not so into brunch because of 1) lines 2) waiting/still takes awhile to get breakfast 3) food's just like what you get at home, but thankfully this place didn't have any of those problems. But really--When I order pancakes now, I know they won't be as good (or to my liking) as the ones we make. That's what I like about eating at home--doing it just the way you like.

Sunday, as you may remember, was the Super Bowl, so I felt incredibly lucky that my boyfriend is not a sports fan at all. One out of seven years together dealing with the Super Bowl isn't all that bad, but thank god I don't have to deal with him vegging out in front of the game every weekend (though now that I think of that, replace game with recorded concerts...). We dined at Gentleman Farmer, which was absolutely lovely. My favorite was the lobster appetizer. It had this solid beurre blanc sauce that was fantastic. They also had no corkage fee because it was Sunday, so we stopped at got a decent bottle of wine ($16). Eric's not a big wine connosieur so I just wanted to get something that would be delicious for both of us. I'd like to be able to drink that nice of wine more often--something quaffable. There really is a huge difference between $5 and $15. Curses!

Panama Photos

2011-01-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Statue of Liberty from Governor's Island

2010-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

Back in the summery weather, Eric and I went by bike to Governor's Island (you take a little ferry) and lounged about in some awesome hammocks they have at the farthest point. I took this using the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone, which makes these old-fashioned photos.

I love Governor's Island...especially when it involves hammock cuddling with a significant other.

Busy Bees

2010-10-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weekends have been really busy in a good way.

Two weekends ago, I went up to Red Hook, New York, for Freedom Fest 3 (for which Eric's friend created a website). It was basically a mini-wedding. They rented this huge, awesome house with a giant in-ground pool and 12-person indoor hot tub. There was a big white tent, a Grateful Dead cover band, and of course a lot of booze and food. Eric was in charge of cooking over 50 pounds of pork. He really hit it out of the park! I was thinking people would be drunk and not care about food, but everyone was raving about it. He made three different sauces (vinegar-based, mustard-based, traditional) and it was so good. My only regret (and boy do I regret this) was not eating more. I literally had three bites of his sandwich. ARGH. Despite drinking TWO red bulls and vodka, I passed out a little earlier than I wanted, and my stomach was like, 'aaa' so I ended up bringing saltines up to my bed and eating a couple and then trying to fall back asleep. Eric, on the other hand, was up until almost 5am. How, I do not know why..

Normally, the best part of a party is the late, drunken part, but I think my experience was the opposite. Unlike most of the guests who came up in a party bus (about a 2 hour ride from NYC), we got to stay the whole weekend. The anticipation, have a chill hang out Friday night, lots of quality romantic time with the boyfriend, the hungover breakfast the next morning--that was the best. And there's something about sneaking off with your boyfriend when you're in a crowd that feels very romantic. I met a lot of his old friends and hearing everyone compliment him and really enjoy his company made me really proud and happy to be his girlfriend.

Also--we woke up in the morning to NO POWER and thus NO WATER. It was hilarious (in retrospect). I walked into the kitchen, all disheveled looking, and said--"So, there's no power and no water?" and everyone was like, 'Yup." Pretty funny. I also lost my new J. Crew bikini which pissed me off--I looked EVERYWHERE for it--I mean that house was a mess, we spent hours cleaning it even though most of the party was outside, and still no swimsuit. On the plus side, I took advantage of the J. Crew take an extra 20% off final sale to buy 8 pieces of bathing suits (only one matches, and that one I don't really like, because as Eric says (in the negative) it makes me look naked and it also doesn't have the most flattering cut, and instead of sunshine yellow it's MUSTARD yellow. I'm most excited about this suit that is white with blue polka dots on the bottom and a really pretty navy top on top. So cute! Each suit piece was just $7.99!! Even at $64 for the eight pieces, I got one great suit and a few other ones I will be happy to mix and match in PANAMA. Woo!!!

This weekend I was really proud of myself for being super-social. I really enjoy hanging out with my friends but sometimes I have to force myself to do it. I don't want to say it's like medicine, but here goes--the whole making plans part is the medecine and everything else is awesome. When I get anti-social it's so self-reinforcing. I'll start to feel blah and then not be in the mood to hang out with anyone, even though seeing a friend would be EXACTLY the thing to perk me up. With Eric around, I rarely feel lonely during the weekday evenings, but if it's a weekend with just us and nothing but errands and cooking as activities, I'm more likely to get in a blah mood. I love Eric's cooking but he has WAY more stamina than me.

So Friday:
My yoga teacher didn't show up so I decided to call Anna for a last-minute coffee, and we ended up with tea at d'Espresso. I hadn't seen her for awhile so that was good--she's on my commute home so I'm hoping I can meet up with her more after work

Friday at Midnight: My cousin hosted a Midnight Soul Brunch. It was one of the things where the only person I knew there was my cousin, so the party itself was a lot more effort, but I'm so glad I got to hang out with him in a "friend" setting and not a "family" setting. He and Eric seem to get along pretty well, which I also appreciate! We bought growlers of beer at Whole Foods and and were the toast of the party for it. It works like this: You buy a $5 jug at the store, then bring it to fill up--the beers we chose were $5.99 and $7.99--and one of them was a truly awesome pumpkin ale. I LOVE craft beer. I've always been against getting growlers when it's just me and Eric, but I may change my tune - 64 oz is 2 and 2/3 beers each. That's tipsy, but not WASTED (and I only like to have a couple beers generally--If I get drunk it usually involves wine or spirits). The next party we host I definitely think we'll fill them up, especially with the bikes we have now (though I ended up having to carry them in my front basket, which made it very difficult to streer. Eric tried to bungee cord the growlers in a soft cooler case that he attached to his back bike rack, but it TIPPED over--I screamed--but thankfully did not fall to the ground. We were racing on our bikes to get to Whole Foods before it closed at 11pm, and it made me realize how much I miss getting out and partying like I did when I was single. The city is so ALIVE at midnight--the early birds are going home, everyone else is getting ready to party until 4. I love it!! I am not through with bars, time for me to try to go out more.

On Saturday I went with Rita to Greenpoint Open Studios, which was another really fun experience. We've gone to Bushwick Open Studios the past three years (is that possible, or was it two??), which involves getting a map and then checking out where artists work. They display their work, maybe have some wine and pretzels or whatever for you to munch on. The best part is you actually get to talk to the artists, find out what makes their work tick. Some of this work is SO good--like I would buy it if I were more wealthy and had some cash to spare--and each person's work is that much more interesting when you hear what inspired them or how they created it. LOVE. Rita got way drunk, we biked home (perhaps dangerously), and Eric made some awesome chicken parmesan. To die for. He also took a cheesecake out of the oven which we ate the next day. This cheesecake is perfect. No cracks. Firm on the outside and fluffy in the middle. Huge (It used FIVE blocks of cream cheese). A little sour cream-y and lemon-y. It's perfect. So perfect.

On Sunday, we were planning on biking up to my friend Johanna's place in Morningside Heights in the West 120's (9 miles) then going to a Medieval festival in Fort Tryon Park. I didn't realize that the park is actually in the west 190's--another few miles. I think I biked 17, 18 miles that day?? (We ended up biking back to Johanna's, then taking the subway the rest of the way home since it was getting cold and dark). The Medieval festival was fun, something I wouldn't normally do. I was shocked at the scope of the thing--over 40,000 people were there, apparently, and there were tons of enthusiastic but often amateurish performers, people were in cosume, and of course Eric and I had a turkey leg and fried dough. I saw lots of cool instruments, including a player of a hurdy gurdy (thought you would like to hear that, Laura!). Back at Johanna's apartment, she had just moved in but it looked fantastic. She had painted one wall in each room, and it was such a good look. I went to the Benjamin Moore store at lunch so I plan on doing the painting that I have been putting off forever at my apartment, simply because it's been ambiguous about our lease and we'll have to paint it back when we leave.

That's all folks!

Raise your hand if you hate bigots!

2010-09-27T13:48:00.001-07:00

This makes me so angry.

My favorite part:

1. Misinformation sucks. Why does everyone hate on feminists? Even people who are feminists say they aren't...I never had a bad impression of feminists, so it's hard for me to understand why people think that. I'm not activist-y, but I support feminism.

2. I get upset when people use the Bible to promote hateful behavior. At the very end they point out that he's against beating women and families (well, thank God for that) and he also says that you shouldn't let your sons whore it up because they'll be defiling someone else's daughter (yay for not having a double standard).

But he also says some pretty awful things about being subservient to your husband. I don't know how anyone can live the way he describes. I feel really bad for a man or woman that's in a relationship where the man is on a pedestal as a "virile king."

Sarah's Insomnia Update

2010-09-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

So it's 5:16am on a Saturday morning, and I'm up. No, I wasn't up all night partying, nor am I waking early for an exciting flight somewhere. I have insomnia. And it SUCKS.

Last night (it feels weird saying that when a night's sleep doesn't separate the "last") Eric & I went out with his friend and former co-worker to La Mela, a fun Italian restaurant in Little Italy. You just kind of sit down and they bring out course after course. Eric has been bugging me to try this place for awhile so it was fun to go! For appetizers they have roasted red reppers, asparagus, mushrooms, the typical antipasti, which is followed by a pasta course (my favorite). I was full by then, but Eric insisted on ordering the third course, so I had a couple bites of veal and chicken and and shrimp. I rallied by dessert and was definitely able to fit room for ice cream, ricotta cheesecake and tiramisu. Did I mention the three of us finished a double bottle of white wine?

While it was a fun experience, I wasn't that impressed with the quality of the food. The mozzarella slices in the caprese salad (the other appetizer) were seriously like an inch thick, but didn't have much flavor...we BUY better mozzarella ourselves, and we get juicy tomatoes, not ones that are pale--the tomatoes would have been acceptable in the winter, not the summer.

But so anyway it was a lovely dinner with good conversation and atmosphere--that was the best part. We didn't look at a menu, and Eric knows I get stressed about money, so he wouldn't let me look at the check..but I was just looking at Yelp reviews of the place and they all say that the 20% tip is INCLUDED in the price...but Eric and his friend were both talking about how much to tip...our portion of the bill was around $100 (of course I sneaked a peek!) so if he tipped on that we're basically out $20. I AM SO PISSED. This is why I need to look at bills!!! Mistakes like this KILL me. I went over and woke up Eric in the other room when I found this out...like I seriously get irrational and want to call up the place and rescind the tip and even change my opinion of the place since I feel cheated. ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!!! It makes my stomach all aflutter and sick-feeling too. I wish money didn't have this kind of control over me!

But anyway the reason I am awake is because I had cappuccino with dessert because I thought maybe we would stay awake for awhile or something. Instead, the wine won and I fell asleep, but in a weird way and woke up threeish hours later when the alcohol wore off and I was left with caffeine. I blame the wine and the crowd effect (Eric ordered the coffee so I wanted one too!)

I actually have been having a BIG PROBLEM with insomnia though. It started in mid-July, I think. I had an interview with someone who was calling from Japan at 9am. I normally get into the office a bit later than that, between 9:15-9:30, so the stress of waking up an hour early (which sounds eye-rolling in retrospect!) and wanting to get a good night's sleep plus the first interview for a piece I wasn't feeling that confident about kept me up all night. I haven't had insomnia (with a couple of health scare and random exceptions) since high school, so I didn't even have those blue over-the-counter sleeping pills (apparently they are the same as benadryl) that I used to take to mixed effect in high school. Unfortunately, this bout with insomnia kicked off a wave of sleeplessness. I had insomnia later that week, and several times since then. I've gotten more sensitive to noise, can't tolerate an air conditioner which makes Eric unhappy--it sucks. Thankfully, I read some stuff online that helped. Mainly, I try to avoid going to sleep until I am so tired I'm dragging myself to bed, about an hour past my bedtime. But this means I'm getting less sleep. The other part, which most people have probably heard, is not tossing and turning. You're supposed to get out of bed after 15 minutes and do a quiet activity. Haven't figured that one out yet. I think I need to find my diary and write in there...that was my initial plan tonight but I couldn't find one, as I haven't written in a diary for ages. What I'm doing now, which is play Spider Solitaire on a brightly lit screen, only makes me more awake. Like I spent from 3:30am-5am kind of laying quietly because the idea of performing any kind of activity that involved thinking seemed way too difficult, but now I am WIDE AWAKE. Lovely. Anyway, this bout of insomnia is clearly caused by my mistake of drinking caffeine, and will not be repeated. Hope it doesn't eff up tomorrow though.

The other health problem that I'll touch on briefly since I guess I need to get all this out is MIGRAINES. I'm seeing a doc soon to be sure, but I've had two now in the past month and they are scary and crazy. I was at work when suddenly I start seeing white spots in my field of vision. The best way to describe it is as if you look at the sun and then see a bright spot when the sun is gone. It was worse looking at a computer screen. I tried to type and literally couldn't see half of what I was typing. After half an hour the white spots went away and was replaced with a mild headache above my eyebrows. Which turned into a RAGING headache. With nausea. The first time I mainly stood over a toilet trying to throw up and the second time I went out to try to eat something, settled for a somewhat bland-looking slice of margherita. As the guy hands me the piece I'm suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea, ask for it to go, walk outside, throw up in my mouth, spit in East Village garbage can. It was classy. Anyway, the second time was followed by a night of insomnia (don't remember the first time) so I am hoping that the two are related (and it doesn't have to do with my birth control pills, because I seriously do not want to have to stop taking them...people with migraines are really limited in their BC options).

These health issues seem pretty stress-related despite the fact that I seriously have nothing to be stressed about. I'm in a great relationship, have wonderful friends, like my job. It's really silly and I shouldn't let little things bother me. I've always felt that I have this set level of anxiety that's a bit high, and it comes out in different ways--insomnia, hypochondria, being too focused on controlling what I ate, etc. I've been able to stop most of these problems, but they come out in other ways. What IS the healthy way to discharge stress?

This past week I've decided that I am seriously lacking in the exercise department. There is no gym nearby, so I've been exercising in a rather ad hoc manner. I walk or bike to work, which is 3 miles a day and takes 1 hour (walking)/30 minutes (biking) round trip. But that's really not enough. I swam eight times this season (pitiful, but I picked up at the end) at this outdoor city pool that has lap swim in the summer, and now that that's over I have some guest passes at the Y (I can go 6 times for free at each Manhattan location, which is fabulous considering a membership is $90ish a month for an individual). I played tennis with Eric's friend and hope to do that more.

I also bought this Yoga Passbook for $80 that lets you go a couple times to different yoga studios (I've now used 3 of them, so gone 6 times...yeah I need to work on that too). But since yoga is $10-20 a class this option is so preferable for people like me on a budget. Obviously I work better when I have a gym membership and can be like, oh, it's Monday, I can catch the 8pm yoga class. However, I really do want to make good use of this yoga book...because I've been so derelict I basically can go a couple dozen of times at places within a 5 minute bike ride from work, so I have no excuse. It's just the newness part of it each time that is a turn-off.

Anyway, I went to yoga on Thursday and it felt so fabulous. I need to do it more for stress reduction and, of course, fitness. Distance swimming was my "thing" and there are parallels for me between yoga and distance swimming. Yoga emphasizes breathing, just as swimming does, and the movements are slow and fluid. I am definitely not a fast-twitch muscle person. I am SLOW. When I leave class I can feel so incredibly happy and almost euphoric. Why wouldn't I want to do that more often? So now my goal is 2-3 times a week, which will be much easier now that I've discovered biking, which makes getting around to different studios and toting a yoga mat much easier. I need to buy a yoga mat strap though...

So now the sky is changing from black to light blue and I am still awake. Damn caffeine! However, I've caught the blog up with all my raging stress-related illnesses and plan of attack--MORE EXERCISE, ESPECIALLY YOGA.

What else?

PANAMA!!!

Eric and I are going to Panama for vacation this November. I just bought the guide book and we haven't planned out what we're going to do yet. When I read through last afternoon I was overwhelmed by everything and kind of disappointed with the beach options--we're going at the end of November, which is towards the end of the rainy season (mid-December), but the Caribbean and Pacific sides have totally different weather so it seems like we may be in for rain no matter where we are. Last year in Costa Rica (one country north) we also had rain but looking back it didn't really bother us (and it only rained one day at the beach, which was beautiful and we didn't really mind). So we'll see! It also sounds like Panama City will be fun and there's plenty of buildings and ruins etc to see so we can fit that in.

I think that's all for now...

Weekend Update

2010-04-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

BIKING
I am really getting into this biking thing! On Sunday Eric & I took a ride around the lower perimeter of Manhattan, up to Chelsea Market (my previous haunting place). There, we stuffed our backpack full of Manhattan Fruit Exchange goodies. I was very excited to get my fix of unpasteurized juice—I bought grape and, to try something new, Spinach Orange. I have always been intrigued/afraid of veggie juices, but this juice was wonderful—sweet from the oranges with a mild, pleasant spinach flavor.

They opened an Anthropologie in Chelsea Market. Of course. Two months after I move away, they open my favorite store ONE BLOCK AWAY. We briefly went in there, and I went to the hardware section and ended up buying a cute discounted hook to hang on the back of a door. I have been buying a lot of those lately. Gotta love hooks.

We went back through Manhattan (I think the total was about 10 miles round trip). My friend Rita had biked over from Brooklyn, but instead of riding more we went up to the apartment and had some dinner. The heirloom tomato we bought from Chelsea Market sadly turned out to be bust, but we grilled it and had a warm caprese salad, which was still enjoyable, especially with warm mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella pretty much makes everything better. We also finished the ravioli I bought in Little Italy. I had also made Molasses cookies the other day, which were wonderful, and still had 2/3 of the batter left in the fridge. I put them in the oven, but because our usual kitchen timer was outside, we just thought we would remember…but we didn’t. I remembered over FORTY minutes later. Miraculously, the cookies were fine. They’re crisp, and I prefer chewy, but they didn’t burn or anything. I suspect it’s because they were made with (trans fat-free) shortening, which probably has a higher burn point than butter. Crazy.

THE WIRE
Later that night, Eric & I watched the last episode of “The Wire.” I am very sad to finish this series. It’s just so, so, so incredibly good and thoughtful and deep and intense. Eric and I had great conversations about this show and I actually feel like I’ve learned things about how police, gangs, politics, public schools, and how unions work. The show has a pretty depressing theme overall, with the idea that institutions hold you back and nothing will ever change and the same cycles repeat themselves over and over again. The last episode brought that all back, setting it up for the cycles to continue and repeating some of the scenes from the first episodes. I can’t wait to go through the blogosphere and read more about the show now that I don’t have to worry about spoilers. I miss you, Omar and McNulty!!

Now that we’re done with “The Wire,” I think we’re going to move on to Damages and Treme. We saw the first episode of Damages, and it was pretty good, with lots of information about high-powered lawyers, and Treme is the next work from The Wire creators. But now that it’s warmer out not sure if we’ll be watching as much of the tube.

...AND THE WORRYWART STRIKES AGAIN
My Mom and Aunt are visiting this weekend. I am very excited but also nervous because I want them to have a perfect visit with all good weather and events and nothing bad happening. But I am trying to be less anxious/people pleaser/perfectionist so instead I have been telling myself to throw all those expectations away and just have an adventure. An adventure!!! I am sick of worrying myself sick…literally.

Today I have some discomfort in the back of my throat and sneezed once and started freaking out. It’s like, calm down Sarah, it will be fine. My worrying is something I want to address. I know I’m being irrational about a lot of my worries, especially when I freak out about my health or think I have some sickness or random disease, but it’s really hard to find a way to stop and get out of that thought cycle. I wish I were a cool, tortured neurotic. Maybe I should work on shifting my anxieties over to brooding, existential things instead of thinking I need a root canal.

So that’s a good example: My dentist did a filling, which turned out to be much deeper than he thought because it was partly a replacement filling and there was more decay than he anticipated. As I left the office, he told me to beware of shooting pains, because there was a small chance the tooth wouldn’t calm down and I would need a root canal. Enter me: beleaguered with tooth pain for two weeks until I went in and he told me everything was fine.

It’s really the power of suggestion. If you focus on an area of your body, you can make yourself experience pain or sensation and your brain can twist that however you want. I guess on the bright side, my mind has the ability to control how I experience my body in a more active way than most people (I suspect). I just need to figure out how to use this power for good (i.e. calming) rather than bad. Or maybe I need to not try to control my body at all, and just acknowledge how my body feels and move on. This makes me feel New Age-y….although speaking of it, I need to do more yoga. Yoga is a lot about experiencing your body and not trying to control it. There are points where you try to do things like breathe away stress and relax your whole body, which can unconsciously be tense. But it’s also about not forcing your body and allowing it to do as it wishes. I need to get back into that. I think it makes me feel better (which in my case, means virtually nothing, because I can make my body feel anything), but at least I get that sense of well-being. So that's it for me worrying about how much I worry, the main worry in my life right now...

Highlights List

2010-04-09T09:09:00.001-07:00

1. I am now the proud owner of a bike. I have gone on two biking adventures since I purchased it three weeks ago. It just transforms the way you experience the city. The first week we took this 5 hour trip that involved Central Park, Soul Food in Harlem, and just the prettiest water sights from bluffs you have ever seen. Last weekend involved the Manhattan Bridge, Prospect Park, meeting up with a Brooklyn friend and brunchin', then over the (massively crowded) Brooklyn Bridge, the three of us, home to some Easter dinner. Biking is so much faster. I am still nervous about traffic but thankfully there are areas with good bike lanes so that makes things easier. Eric & I are thinking of going on a bike trip over Memorial Day weekend because renting a car costs $500 for that weekend and hotels are apparently expensive too...we'll see how that pans out.

2. Amazing weather! It got almost to 90 degrees this Wednesday. I kind of regretted my wish for a hot summer. The best part of this is living somewhere with a balcony. This week Eric & I have been having our morning coffee out there, as well as our evening meals. Pre-Sunset, it's pretty awful out there because the sun is shining right in your face, but that's the price you pay for some great overall exposure. Usually we eat post-Sunset so it's been more of a problem when I got out there for some happy hour or post-work relaxing.

3. Gardening! I have one hanging plant indoors (that was a drama to hang, since there is a lot of steel near the windows that you, um, can't drill through) and bought some mint last weekend (MOJITOS!!!). Eric has killed every tree-like plant that he has ever put on the balcony, so I hope to fix that this summer and make the mint survive. Since it's lower down than a tree, hopefully it won't tip over the pot, since we do get high winds that can pose a problem. All of the plants sold at delis are kind of questionable or expensive, but on Wednesday I went to the Union Square Greenmarket and saw tons of indoor/outdoor plants for sale. I am going on a shopping spree!!! Hoping for an aloe vera plant, some basil, and maybe one other herb.

4. CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). Eric & I joined. It will be for 22 weeks, I think, which comes out to $15 or so a week, for organic fresh veggies that we have to pick up on Thursdays from 5-8. Neither of us is crazy about having to be free at a specific time once a week, but hopefully it will work out and we can make friends who can pick up the produce for us in a jam. I am looking forward to GOOD tomatoes, and not those awful pink ones. Hopefully this will make us eat more veggies, too, and be more healthy. Last night I improv'ed this awesome veggie dish (1 zucchini + 1 tomato + 3 cloves of garlic in the last minute + fresh basil, wilted in the pan for a little less than a minute after that) and it was sooo good and made me get excited about vegetables. I liked the mix, so much more interesting to the palate than sauteed broccoli. Amazing accompaniment to salmon.

This weekend we plan to take the ferry to IKEA in Red Hook, and hopefully we can cart out the awful dresser we replaced a couple weeks ago. Hurray for the weekend!

Weekend re-cap: cookin' and decoratin'

2010-03-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was great. Terrible weather kept us inside except for some hair-drenching trips to the market (E had to force me to go both times), leaving us with time for some home improvement, relaxing, and cooking.

Friday night we made these awesome burgers, seriously some of the best ones I have had in my life. I used to dislike burgers--I would always order a grilled cheese off the kids menu or the chicken mcnuggets at mikey d's--but I've come around. They're far better for you than baked goods, my main vice, so I feel free to indulge now and then. E had me buy a pound and a half of meat, claiming he would make three half-pound burgers, so I bought two hamurger buns and one brioche bun from this new place in Essex Market, Pain D'Avignon. That made the difference. This place is also a restaurant supplier, and the final burger (also thanks to Eric's superb cooking) had a real restaurant taste. But anyway, he ended up making two twelve-ounce burgers, and I ate the whole thing. I felt fine, since I had a small lunch, but three hours later the foods was still sitting in my stomach and I started making some groaning noises. toooo mucccchhh fattttt. I also drank red wine with the burger, which I would have anyway, but I heard there is something in red wine that neutralizes a bad thing released when you digest red meat. So doubly awesome.

Our next big cooking adventures are going to be in bread, so that night we started on a yeasted coffee cake that we had for breakfast the next day. It was a little dry and possibly overcooked, and the cinnamon-pecan crumbles on top kept on falling off, so they probably should have been tucked into the dough, but it was a good start. Yeasted things are also less sweet than chemically leavened cakes, so I look forward to developing a more adult, less sweet palate when it comes to baking. I found this recipe for St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake that we plan to try next, for a more decadent takeb. I also attempted the much-talked-about no-knead bread. I used the recipe in my copy of "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman (also where we got the coffee cake recipe from), and it called for 2 cups of water, when a lot of the other online recipes called for less. This turned out to be a problem when I got to the baking time and the dough was wayyy too wet to shape into a ball. I had to add more flour and let it rise more, and then I had to disrupt the dough once more to try to plop it into a pan (it cooks in a covered cast iron to produce steam similar to steam-injected. I think the latter part disrupted the air bubbles and created the dense loaf that popped out of the oven. It did have an awesome look to it and great crust, so, again, good start. This isn't as easy as making chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday Eric made omelettes (new for him) and we made another Bittman recipe, Chicken with Chickpeas and Lentils. I am so used to eating really rich food with Eric that it tasted kind of healthy and bland. I added some yogurt and mango chutney, however, and that fixed the whole thing. It was yummy. Since we were so healthy and had some processed peanut butter left in the fridge that neither of us will eat plain, we made peanut butter cookies that night. Seriously, so much cooking!

HOME DECORATING!!!
Last week I bought this cute lampshade at KMart to go with the vintage lamp I got in Michigan that it beaded white milk glass. Now we have more lighting in the bedroom, woo! It also matches the bedspread pattern so I am excited about that. I also bought a side-hanging plant bracked that we were able to install, after our failed attempts to drill into our steel beams near the window. I couldn't hang up this cute shadowbox in the bedroom for the same reason (so annoying), but I did hang up the photo calendar Eric made that has a lot of pictures of us in Costa Rica. But, my most exciting DIY project was the handkerchief one!!

My grandma sent me this beautiful handkerchief from the 1940's (she's an antique dealer, so she knows) with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle and four other tourist attractions on the side. I thought it was cute and was going to hang it up with tape where the shadowbox couldn't be hung up, when I had a flash of inspiration.

I've been carrying around this picture frame I found in my old apartment's "take it" section for over two years. It said $39.99 on the back and was from Bed Bath & Beyond, but it has a thick mat and I could never think of anything to go in it. Still, I was happy to have it because I've discovered that framing shit is expensive but makes your walls look really, really good. Also, the saw hanging thing on the back was missing. I bought an additional saw hook from Home Depot a few weeks ago, but still had no picture.

I fitted the handkerchief into the frame and voila! It was a little too big so I did some artful adjusting. It's not perfectly straight and it has a little wave in it so you can tell it's fabric, but I like the overall effect. We hung it above the bed and it looks really, really good, with the black matching the black bed frame. I had planned on getting New York City-themed prints anyway, but this is totally unique and a nice way to remember my Grandma. Plus, you can look at the picture then look out the window and see the Brooklyn Bridge! I LOVE IT!

Last night we watched the Season Finale of Season 4 of The Wire. SO AMAZING. I love this show, but it can be so depressing. Boiled down, the theme of the show is "anytime you try to fix something the system/society will prevent you from making any meaningful change." This season

Apartment Update

2010-03-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

I moved into my new apartment the last weekend in February. I stressed so much about the move, while E was chill the whole time (figures). The total cost of the move ended up being little more than one cab fare on the very last day with a few extra bags, so I was very, very happy with how that worked out. I didn't really have any furniture, except for my bed, which I sold, but I still had a nightstand and mounds of clothes to move. The move ended up happening in three parts. A couple weeks before the move, E had borrowed a friend’s car since he was going to multiple Trey concerts. We moved a bunch of stuff after work, which was great.

Then, the second-to-last week in February, E had to rent a car for work. The only car they had at the time was a huge plumbing van, like the kind serial killers use. He decided to take it, even though it was a pain to drive, since it would be convenient for the move. It was so big I had to help navigate. Anyway, that was fabulous. We were able to load up my nightstand, side table, mirror, and my millions of bags. I didn’t really have boxes, so a lot of stuff I just piled into random large purses and garbage bags. The next day, I scoured craigslist for cheap furniture and we ended up buying two bookcases for the apartment (for under $100!) that fit quite easily into the van. I was also very happy because when E bought a bed a few months ago the security guy yelled at us because it’s a co-op and you have to use special moving passes whenever you’re moving stuff, so they can pad the elevators. You’re also not allowed to use luggage carts to move furniture. We disobeyed both of those rules but didn’t get yelled at again, for which I was grateful.

The weekend after moving in my stuff, we went to Home Depot and bought everything you could possibly need for home improvement...well, almost everything. A drill, drill bits, screws, superglue, picture hanging things, extra hooks. A really nice worker helped us, and he told us to fill out this customer service thing online, which I did. I hope he gets recognized for his good work!

E turned out to be a whiz with the drill and it feels so nice to have hooks and, thus far, one picture hung. The only problem is my plant hook. In my last apartment, my philodendron hung from my window, but I think by our windows it’s steel, because even our masonry (aka concrete) bit wouldn’t go through the wall. It’s now hanging precariously in the middle of the living room because it seems to need to have all its leaves hanging to survive. I just bought a side-mount plant hook at Kmart during my lunch break so I hope that that will do the trick.

I’m pretty happy with the new space, but I hate hate hate all the old fixtures. There is just decades of grime that won’t lift, no matter how hard you try. The enamel coating has worn off the 60s-era sink and bathtub, so it’s porous and stains quickly and leaves weird dirt streaks. Doors are broken and shredded and don't close very well and are covered with layers and layers of paint. Our kitchen cabinets don’t close. The whole apartment needs to be repainted. A lot of things are covered in paint from the previous haphazard paint job. The toilet leaks. The ceiling has water damage that we need to call maintenance about. We’re missing blinds (working on that) and are hit with blinding afternoon sun on the weekends. The areas that do have blinds have orange or blue mini blinds. I hate 60s and 70s-era color choices. The floors are a little scuffy-looking….and did I mention WE DO NOT HAVE A DISHWASHER??? This is very dire, given that we cook EVERY DAY and have all these nasty dishes in the sink. I bought some heavy-duty washing gloves at Home Depot that hopefully won’t hole up in like a week like the other ones. At least that way I can wash in hot water AND have hands that don’t feel painfully dry. However, it is really frustrating to be in an apartment that needs so much fixing up. Laura, I am jealous of your well-refurbished apartment. However, I need to keep the benefits in mind: HUGE apartment (by New York standards). 19th floor view of NYC, Brooklyn Bridge. A balcony to go outside and enjoy the view. Laundry in the basement (another only-in-New-York-it’s-a-luxury). Rent…well I think the rent is reasonable by New York standards (at least when it’s split with boyfriend), but it’s still like mortgage-level.

Oh yes, and an apartment to share with the boyfriend!! I’m actually really pleased with how far we’ve come already with the apartment, and we have a Salvation Army pick-up in a couple of weeks so we’ll have a little more space in our closets (another New York luxury). But that doesn't mean that when I'm searching for my next place I will want it to be sanded and painted and have non-vinyl, chipping countertops. Ugh. My apartment and I definitely have a love-hate relationship.

I knew America's obsession with plastic surgery would help me sometime!

2010-03-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

So, this is how I research doctors.

I took these pills and now I'm a crybaby

2010-02-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

I think men don’t cry because of hormones. Since going on the birth control pill a year ago, I have found that crying comes much, much easier to me. I cry reading a moving newspaper story at work, I cry at movies, I cry when I’m frustrated, I cry whenever I’m having emotional discussions with my boyfriend. When I told my gynecologist about it, she seemed worried, but I explained I don’t feel sadder than I used to, I just express my sadness with crying.

In fact, this morning I cried while having an IM conversation with my boyfriend—to be fair, we were discussing something really, really sad. Although it was awkward to blink back tears and hope no one comes over to my desk in the interim, I still like being able to cry more easily—except for the fact that crying in public has become a little too common. I didn’t appreciate the time I was sobbing in the subway uncontrollably before the Wilco concert, or the other time I ended up sobbing on public transportation after a conversation with my dentist (the truth can be harsh).

But I associate not being able to cry with being depressed. I remember feeling so sad when I was alone in LA the summer after my junior year of college, and being utterly unable to cry. Even after I got over that, my before and after still involved a lot less crying than my childhood and early teens.

But now I am a crier, and proud of it. I am 99.9% positive this is because of birth control pills, because objective things like television shows, newspaper articles, and movies don’t change. Their emotional content is pretty standard, and the only thing that’s changed is that I cry in response to them. The other possibility is that I am much happier with my boyfriend, and I can experience the full range of emotions, good and bad, because I am in such a good place. That could be true, I suppose, but I am less inclined to believe it because the crying and emotion in response to random things seems so utterly disconnected from what’s going on in our relationship. I would be more inclined to believe that if I were mostly crying when we’re having emotional conversations or fights or whatever.

So anyway, birth control pills have an unexpected side effect: making you cry more often! And some random crazy chick (that would be me) thinks this is a benefit, not a drawback.

What better way to start your day than with a constitutional

2010-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

In less than one month, this will be my new walk to work!

View Larger Map

I am also thinking about getting a bike to make the commute a bit faster. I can store my bike in the apartment, but I will have to lock it outside of work, which I am a bit afraid of. Mayor Bloomberg passed a law last December saying that employees should be able to bring their bikes inside their workplace, but I asked the people downstairs and they said they had a "no bike" policy. Phooey. I see bikes without wheels, seats, etc. all the time, which have either been stolen or people going through the trouble of removing these things so they won't get stolen. One would hope during the day it's okay, but there are a lot of delivery people dropping off breakfast and lunch, meaning lots of bikes are going in and out (and not a lot of space to chain up). That makes me a little more hesitant to spend the $200-300 I estimate it will cost for bike, helmet, and decent lock. But the bf likes bike riding and, if not for commuting, it would be a fun weekend activity for us.

Costa Rica Pictures

2010-01-20T15:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, I should have linked to these long ago, but Flickr was being finnicky. Enjoy!

Google solves problems for the would-be lovelorn

2010-01-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

I like to type existential questions into Google. I'm thinking of taking a big step in my relationship (moving in, not the other one), and I'm filled with all those fears and doubts the way people of the Sarah persuasion are, and I came across this article about knowing if someone is "the one".

I started crying when I read this:

"I remember sitting on an old davenport in a tiny cabin on the Washington coast years ago, having a tearful conversation with Mr. R about this very concerning concern. He was pretty convinced that we were IT. Yes, but how did he know? I still wasn't sure.

Finally, he said in pure flabergastation (flabergastification? flabergastedness?) something like this:

There is no ONE. No one that exists out there in pure form, in spiritual perfection, in theoretical bliss. We make it the one every single day...in what we say to each other, in how we treat each other, in what we do together. On dog walks and in car rides, over dinners and through disagreements. So stop looking for some theoretical one out there in never-never land. And agree to make this the one, each and every day, with me."

It was exactly what I needed to hear. She even touched upon my greatest fear earlier in the article (before the quote), that twenty years down the line I'll change my mind. And how can that even happen? How can you be with someone so long and not have it work out? That scares me to death. If you "make" it the one, you have control over your situation, you're choosing to love someone. They're choosing to love you. At the same time, I have a problem with wanting to have control over things that are uncontrollable. Part of me feels I should just flow with whatever happens to me. And what about the things you can't really control? What about the ways that you're initially drawn to someone, like physical chemistry, having similar things in common, or life goals. What if those change? What, oh god what, do you do if the passion fades away? (Another one of my fears). I guess there is nothing left to do put keep thinking and feeling and wondering...and eventually, believing.

Costa Rica - Montezuma and the Beach

2009-12-04T14:32:00.001-08:00

I still have my sunburn from Costa Rica, but everything else about it is fading fast. I love traveling, so much, and was planning on doing a day-by-day recap here but I don’t know if I can recapture all those moments in my head. Even looking at the pictures (which I will post soon), there’s a certain level of bliss that just can’t be called back by my memory.

And little things, too. On my second-to-last day in Costa Rica, I suddenly realized my perpetually clogged sinuses had cleared. I hadn’t wore up with nasty sinus-snot mouth, nor was I blowing my nose throughout the day. All this despite the developing world-standard exhaust I was inhaling everyday, plus the occasional cigarette (since they’re supposed to relieve nausea and Eric was smoking some).

My favorite part of the trip was Montezuma, which is on the tip of the Nicoya Penninsula, on the inland side, so it doesn’t have the big waves and accompanying surfer crowd. When we arrived, we were tired after a 6am Tico bus, a two-hour 11:00 Ferry, and another hour and a half Tico bus (read: local, cheap bus. This was the only day we took the Tico bus but I would do it again if I had more time, since it just takes slightly longer and a knowledge of where you’re going), all after a night with virtually no sleep thanks to my choice to stay at $30/night Pension St. Elena (you get what you pay for). I was busy using my phone card to try to figure out a place to stay when Eric walked into a real estate office and found this great woman there. We ended up renting a house—really a rustic cabin—on the beach for just $80/night. It was amazing. There was no road behind the house, as we initially thought. People came and went literally by driving on the beach in 4X4s. Awesome. We hadn’t rented a car, but we were able to walk to town in about ten minutes, perfect for dinner and trips to the Montezuma Supermercado.

After getting all of our things settled that afternoon, we headed straight for the beach to cool off. The water was like bathwater. You just walked right in. There was absolutely no adjustment time at all. Perfect. The waves were pretty intense, and required some dedicated diving beneath them to get to a comfortable floating place far enough from shore. It just reminded me how much I love beaches, and how every time I am near one I want to live there.

We showered off, had some drinks, mango juice and rum courtesy of Eric’s mixology, and Imperial, the beer of Costa Rica (the other one is Pilsner).

The town itself is kind of like Berkely, California. A little hippie, a little upscale. There was the expensive smoothie place Organico that we ended up never going to, though we did buy some vegan granola from them to have for breakfast. The nice restaurant, Cocolores, which actually ended up being pretty well-priced for the "most expensive" place in town. The night we went there I had this mahi mahi (THREE huge filets...I couldn't finish them) with banana in curry sauce. The banana was SO good. I love sweet preparations for meats, and this was so original. Mmm. They also had a quesadilla-type place, and then our favorite, Cafe Buen Provecho. We ate there our first and last night there. We were totally bummed out on casados, which is Costa Rica's national dish. We tried to eat local, but let's be honest: Costa Rican food is not that exciting. A casado consists of some type of meat, generally grilled and greasy but somehow dry, rice, red bean (which were always cooked perfectly every time. I LOVE beans), plantains (good) or mashed potatoes (bad), and salad. The good ones were topped with local cheese, which is salty and has the consistency of feta with a more neutral, cottage cheese-y flavor. Anyway, after eating all this local food, we were thrilled to have the most amazing bread salad ever at this place, some delicious sangria, and filet mignon with this awesome cilantro/parsley dipping sauce. So, so good. The last night there, we made friends with the owner (who used to live in San Fran) and her boyfriend (a Tico). We also liked the waitress, who was from Ohio. They were so nice, and we talked about food and how it really fit our palette. It turned out they had only been open for a couple of weeks. The general friendliness with random people happened throughout our trip. It really happens naturally, but I also have to thank Eric for being more out there and willing to exchange emails, facebook, etc. with people. Our camera battery died when we were ziplining and we got this Belgian and French guy to take (HD!) videos of us ziplining. Now we just need to see them :).

That night we went back to the place, looking forward to our "quiet, private" place, especially after a night of hearing motorcycles all night. Instead, there was blasting salsa music coming from the resort which was around a rocky corner, a few hundred yards away. I was having none of it. I decided we should investigate rather than try to go to sleep and listen to hours of music. We had seen a wedding earlier on the beach, so we thought it might be the reception. We were right. We asked the waiter when they thought it would be over, they said 10 something, but thankfully Eric went ahead and talked to the head guy, who told us 11:30 and gave us free drinks. We hung around for awhile, awkwardly on the fringes of the (small) wedding. Closer to the beach, they were building a huge tepee fire, which was really beautiful to look at. You could see upstairs, and some other people at the resort were taking a break from their dinner and dancing. We went back, so tired the music didn't bother me as I drifted to sleep.

It started to rain in the middle of the night. Eric was complaining of bugs biting him. We had a "charming" mosquito net to drape over our bed. I was fine...or so I thought. I woke up the next morning, and on my way to the bathroom I could tell something was wrong. I had four or five bug bites around my eye, on my cheek and my forehead, and one of my eyes was swollen, deforming my face. This has happened to me exactly twice before, once at summer camp and once in NYC, and this ranked between the two of them. In all my pictures, if you look closely you can tell, especially when I'm smiling. One side will have no undereye crease at all because it's so swollen. Thankfully it didn't swell up from my nose side--that's what happened at summer camp and I looked like a chipmunk. The arm that was poking from the covers was also COVERED in bug bites. At least 30 on my upper arm. I had another 10 or so bug bites over the rest of my arm. Eric, on the other hand, was fine. All of his bites had "healed" overnight. Lucky bastard. Needless to say, I covered my body in carcinogenic DEET for the next three nights.

With the rainy weather, we didn't get around to beach walking until late in the day, when we found Playa Grande. Because there are periodic rock formations jutting out to the sea (Eric said they were volcanic), there are trails through those sections. After walking for quite some time, since I wanted to climb all through one section of the rocks, we found this amazing beach, probably at least a mile long of just sand. And no people. It was so beautiful. The waves had these incredibly long breaks. We swam for just 10-20 minutes, because it was getting to dusk, and vowed to return the next day.

The next day I rented a boogie board and we headed to Playa Grande. It was really hard to get out there with the board. It would take five minutes of HARD work to get past all the waves. Then some rogue ones would come up and give you more work to do! When I finally did catch a wave, I had one of the longest rides in my life. It was amazing, though I have to say I'd rather have shorter rides with an easier time getting to the reset position. The waves were also really strong, and it was hard to find one big enough to take you all the way to the shore that wouldn't just injure you instead...

Ok, I don't think anyone is going to read anymore than that. All for now!!

Say 'I do' to straps

2009-10-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

I don't wear anything strapless. Even spaghetti straps and halters pose problems for me. I have very wide shoulders from years of swimming, and these styles only highlight the width of my shoulders. They also don't provide the best supports to your breasts, they can make your arms look fat, since there's no flattering sleeves to elongate or shape them. Plus, you're more prone to back fat. It can be awful.

Because of this, I've always looked at strapless wedding gowns with a mix of envy and disdain. I hate the style because I know I could never wear it, and I also hate how ubiquitous it's become, almost generic. It leads to people who would have been better suited to another cut wearing strapless gowns and not looking as good as they deserve to. And I feel bad for them.

So this week Ivanka Trump tied the knot, and I LOVED her gown. It was strapless, but then had lace to give it a collar and sleeves. It kind of fit into the current trend of faux necklines. She wore the gown because she is marrying an Orthodox Jew and converting, but I like the idea of wearing a more conservative style for a wedding. One of my aunts was married with a white cowboy hat veil. It's not a timeless style.

Coincidentally, New York Magazine made wedding gowns their latest Shop-A-Matic. A lot of the more expensive gowns have sleeves and coverages on top, often in extremely creative ways with interesting sleeve shape and draping. I sincerely hope this trend will trickle down, because I am not spending several thousand dollars on a wedding gown. In fact, I kind of hope I can find a reasonably priced wedding tailor in Brooklyn who will copy my dream gown (Alex has a friend who did this)

I like this one:

And this one (my favorite):

Even this full-sleeved one could work, though I don't like it as much as I did yesterday:

I don't like the body of this one, but the draped sleeves are gorgeous, feminine, and goddess-like:

Disclosure: I am not planning on getting married soon. I don't fantasize (that much) about weddings. Don't get worried!!

Maybe I should work in public health?

2009-10-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a bit about where I want to go in life, and what other careers I'd like to pursue. I love my job, but there isn't opportunity for promotion within the company. On top of that, there aren't many jobs elsewhere. Journalism is a dying field. I do like the idea of working in freelance writing, especially since that is a flexible career that would well with having kids.

I've often thought that I would transition into marketing of some sort. I love food, so I've also thought about working with in-store marketing, etc. Wouldn't it be cool to work for Whole Foods or Trader Joe's? I think they do a great job and I'd love to be a part of their community awareness campaigns, or even managing supply chains or something like that. I've also thought of working in the "CPG" (consumer packaged goods) market, even going so far as to learn the acronym. For the record, it's working in things like cereal, canned and frozen foods, neosporin, all the stuff you buy in stores. However, for some reason working in a store, where people make those choices, sounds better to me than actively convincing people to buy YOUR product.

I've always been interested in health. I loved my epidemiology class in college, which required fairly sharp math skills and the ability to read some rather tricky articles in medical journals. But I hated all my science classes in high school, so I never considered myself qualified for a job in a health field. I recently found out one of my friends, who also graduated with a degree in anthropology, is pursuing a degree in public health. She wrote her thesis on media representations of gardasil, I believe, and is working at the NIH in a receptionist role, so she's clearly on the track to doing that (unlike me). But I like the idea of doing marketing, but for public health. So much of writing is the joy of sharing ideas with people and trying to be persuasive and predicting what people are interested in. I would love to do something like that. Like advertising, but for good. I've done research this week on the field, but I'm still not totally sure about what types of qualifications you need to go to school, what degree in public health I could pursue, or even if there is a job out there that would utilize my interests. I've never been a politics person, and I'm terribly impatient, so I imagine that would eliminate a lot of potential positions for me. Would I want to work in advocacy? Would I want to try to do some kind of anthropological research of certain health populations? My mom works in educational research (she has her master's), and doing her kind of job, but in health, sounds very doable to me. And in terms of job stability--well, people will always need health care. If anything, couldn't government involvement increase the amount of funding available?

I really don't want to go back to school right now, and even more I really like my relationship and the idea of making choices that would move me away from my friends and boyfriend is not appealing to me. I also think that if I'm really, truly interested in this field, I need to work in it before I go back to school. Maybe even abroad? I've heard of, and know, many paralegals who decided against going to law school after their experience, and I think I should do the same thing. After all, it turned out that media planning wasn't really the best career choice for me.

So that's my plan out of left field. Thoughts?

Ice cream birthday clubs are the best thing ever

2009-10-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

Join them!

I love promotions and free things, so a few years ago I started signing up for ice cream birthday clubs. My birthday is on Monday, and already I have three free scoops lined up. It's so easy - they send you an email, you print out the coupon, and ususally you can use it the week before and after your birthday.

I used my Cold Stone one yesterday, and I now have Haagen-Dazs and Baskin Robbins left. When you're older, it seems like there's less hullabaloo surrounding your birthday, which is fine. So it's nice to leave work during an afternoon and have some spoonfuls of delicious creamy goodness. On a related note, unless there's pumpkin ice cream I think I might need to go with sorbet or something. I had the "like it" coffee with brownie yesterday, and it gave me serious indigestion. I don't think I'm lactose intolerant, but ice cream and milkshakes often give me stomachaches. I think Cold Stone just injects extra fat into their ice cream. I doubt it even makes it taste much better. In NYC, they have to post calorie counts next to the ice cream. A "love it" signature creation (which they used to give you on your birthday) can range up to ONE THOUSAND CALORIES. That's disgusting. Cold Stone, unlike other ice cream places, uses a miniscule cup then has it spill all the way over. It's like they want you to trick yourself into thinking it's not that much ice cream. Their hedonism is unparalleled. A few years ago I was with a co-worker and we got Cold Stone to go after eating some sushi (I was full). We had these hyper scooper girls who were trying to make us get bigger sizes, and then "misunderstood" us and gave us the bigger sizes. The medium in a to-go cup filled up an entired PINT. They had to half-fill my colleague's in a TWO-QUART container. Not normal.

Yoga-riffic (a -riffic trend)

2009-10-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

I am finally getting back into the swing of things with yoga. There was the broken bone in the hand, which put me out of commission for two months this summer, and even after that it was painful at first, so I had to take it easy and do things like use double mats and put a towel under my hand when I put a lot of weight on it.

I checked my calendar, and I went six times in September (um, none the first week, then twice a week), and then seven times so far this month (and I'm hoping to squeeze in another session this week). And October even included a pulled neck (caused, I believe, by not enough yoga, then unable to be cured by it) and a cold that made me miss a class.

Yesterday the class, which I would say is maybe intermediate, was on the easy side, and I think it's partially because I have finally started to improve. We kept on doing half chaturangas, where you go on your knees first, and I was like, "Bring it on! I want FULL chaturangas." I also think the Friday class I've been going to, which is more advanced, has helped me improve.

I highly recommend yoga for anyone with back problems. After switching jobs, walking to work, and taking up regular yoga, my back problems got so much better, and then got SO MUCH WORSE when I didn't work out regularly because of my hand injury. Part of that, too, was bullshit, since I totally could run and kind of put it off.

Next up is keeping up with regular running. The last time I went was two weeks ago, when I was feeling oh-so-slightly sick and had just gotten a flu shot. I decided to run anyway along Hudson River Park, in the craziest wind ever. I was basically running in place. The seagulls were doing that thing where they're flapping their wings as hard as they can and they are still staying in the same place. I was a people version of that seagull. And I got a terrible cold. Turns out that really heavy exercise can dampen your immune system, so I guess I just need to get to the place where a 30-minute run doesn't kill me and give me (and then my boyfriend...) a cold.

My New York Times debut

2009-10-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

So a couple weeks ago Eric & I were interviewed for a Sunday Styles article about the "growing trend of home butchering." Our butcher, Jeffrey, was being interviewed for the piece, so he invited us to come to his class so it would have a better showing and we could say good things about him.

The piece is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/fashion/25meat.html

They got a couple of things wrong about me. I'm an assistant editor (I don't want to overstate my occupation) and I went to a college with lots of vegetarian and vegan students. I didn't live in a vegan house. Today, after some debate, I wrote in with the two errors, so we'll see if they fix it. I started thinking about all that misinformation being circulated through the internet, years later, and decided to nip it in the bud.

Here's the slideshow (I start at slide 8), where they paraphrase me. You can see Eric on my left!

Gyno-riffic

2009-10-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the gyno for my annual. I really like my doctor. Yes, she has her flaws--like pushing me to take brand name bc pills that cost three times as much, sometimes being so exuberant I don't have time to ask my embarrassing question, and talking so loudly that you can hear her say "VAGINA" on the other side of the door. But I like her.

I've been examined by male doctors before, and while it was a medical touch, there was a certain care for what they did that signalled "This is a special region. A sexual region. I'm taking care not to violate that." She just dives right in. She has this bubbly voice with odd inflections, so when she says "vagina" it's like va-giii-na, with the g-i a slightly different pitch than the rest of the word. She's great. And this time, I barely even noticed how casual she was with the whole speculum, breast examination, etc. Because that's how I felt about it too.

The other (bodily function) part of the story was that I have had a YI for the past two and a half months that I was trying to will into going away. It actually did go away when I got my period, because of the change in Ph, but came right back a week later. Because YIs and BV are really just an imbalance of naturally occurring organisms, and when I get them, I get them again and again and again, I usually try to stick through the pain and itching. And sometimes it works. After trying all the home remedies (yogurt, garlic, tea tree oil), I am convinced that eating a clove of raw garlic twice a day really does help. They say you can smell garlic coming out your pores, so the scent alone proves that it is permeating all the different areas of your body. Just don't do it on an empty stomach or you will feel nauseous. I'm also too cheap to treat them with a $15 cream every single time I get an infection, so I was thrilled that when my doctor gave me the fluconazole it only cost $3.18. For two pills! (apparently one doesn't work so well anymore, the fungi have built up drug resistance). I have never had such a cheap presciption before. Even at our college health center I think it was $10 or $15 for ONE PILL of fluconazole. Plus she gave me two refills, so I think I'll fill one to bring on my Costa Rica trip, just in case. I feel like I hit the medicine lottery.

A La-Di-Da weekend

2009-10-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

I am really excited to go home today. Friday I was feeling sick, it was cold and rainy, and I decided to walk straight over to Eric's (35 minute walk) rather than walk home (20 minutes), get my cell phone charger, neti pot, drill I was going to let Eric borrow, etc., rest, then go over (20-30 minute subway ride + another 10 minute walk). As a result, I have been without a phone for going on three days. It's strange how if I had lost my phone, I would be freaking out over not having it for three days, but because it just died, it was fine, even strangely liberating. Plus, Eric got a new laptop with a camera in it, so I had my informally scheduled Sunday call with my parents over video chat. I really like video chats - my parents pop in and out, Eric & I pop in and out, we arrange the laptop to let them see the sunset. It's nice.

Because I was sick, I did pretty much nothing on Saturday, though I finally left the house so Eric could pick up some free meat that had been in Jeffrey's display case, some pork and ham wrapped up with cheese and vegetables. Of course I had to have a Tra La La cupcake. Mmmm. We watched "Curb Your Enthusiasm," PBS, etc., had dinner, and by the end of the day I was feeling much better.

Except that Eric woke up sick on Sunday, and he's staying home today. We had hung out Wednesday and he didn't get sick, but I guess that sustained contact made sickness inevitable. When you're sucking face with someone not sharing water glasses seems kind of pointless.

To break up the day, we left the house in search of a new cannoli place that had opened up on the Lower East Side. We forgot to write down the address before we left, so we ended up wandering around forever and getting weird directions from people that were totally incorrect. Finally, as we decided to head home, I glimpsed a bubbly pink sign out of the corner of my eye. Success!! We split a mini almond joy cannoli, which was my favorite, then had a regular (with chocolate shell), and pistachio after dinner. I want to go back and try their pumpkin pie cannoli. Mmm. For dinner, Eric made Ropa de Vieja (which was two days in the making), which translates to dirty clothes. It's a beef stew with really tender meat, and a hearty tomato sauce, and spiced mainly with cumin and oregano. In the morning, Eric came into the bathroom with this giant, white/yellow frisbee with some dark marks on it. He made me guess what it was. It was the fat from the beef broth, which had congealed at the top after a night in the fridge. It was at least half an inch think. He was like, "What should I do with it?" and was about to try to break it in half and flush it in the toilet before I intervened. I guess that's what he normally does with grease? Gross.

Eric & I are thinking of starting up a food blog together. I want it to be as much about cooking food as the evolution of our relationship. Kind of like Julie & Julia, where she would talk about her personal life. The only thing is, I am a pretty private person. I feel very ambivalent and reluctant about opening up my life to other people's criticism. Any ideas for names?

Sniffly Sarah

2009-10-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sick. I've been sick since Wednesday. I really wish I could stay home sick. But I don't.

I have ten sick days and have used exactly half of one. Unless I'm deathly ill I feel so guilty for staying home. I think, oh, I'm reading the internet, I could be at work! Or there's some random responsibility that makes it impossible for me to miss work. I'm also bad at judging. The past two mornings I felt okay waking up, but then walking to work in the freezing cold gave me the shivers, my nose is running like crazy, I have all this sinus pressure, etc. ARGH!!

I also think I was confused by the fact that I had the seasonal flu shot on Tuesday. I remember last year feeling a little off, but definitely not like this. I was a little bit congested before I got the shot, so I wonder if the added (killed) virus just blew up my cold. I would have felt stupid if I had stayed home sick because of a flu shot. Doesn't that defeat the point?

I'm still considering getting the H1N1 shot. I can't decide. I am going away over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and flying (I think) increases the risk. I'm still 24, which is in the recommended bracket. Should I get the vaccine?

I can't wait to watch a "60 minutes" on this

2009-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

I had seen this video a few months ago and thought it was a fluke.

Then I saw this one.

I can just imagine a "60 minutes" episode about this, talking about the inspiring rehabilitation this jail provides.

That being said, I kind of want to join in on the fun...though not in a jail in the Philippines.

Dear Crystal Ball...

2009-09-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

I had another rather splendorous weekend with the boyfriend. We made tons of food, as per usual, and I made cranberry nut bread. More than the meat and butter concoctions Eric dreams up, these things are the death of me. I am such a sugar addict, and I'm always chasing that sugar high with one more tiny slice of cranberry nut bread. Thankfully I have Eric who I'll implore to regulate me. It's funny, because I, under my notions of health, tend to eat more in the morning and during the day, whereas Eric is the king of after dinner food, including his inexplicable bowl of rice krispies or whatever after a big dinner. Why not just eat more dinner? Anyways, my 'I eat more during the day so it's okay to eat more quick bread' is not going to fly, at least according to the numbers on the scale when I got home after the weekend.

Yesterday I went to see Capitalism: A Love Story with Eric. Normally I don't talk about movies on the personal blog (ugh, I've had enough!), but since this one is more personal and political, I have to say a few things. One is, see the movie! Second is, in my opinion Michael Moore's films aren't the strongest in breadth or depth or accuracy, but challenging conventional wisdom. He's great at coming up with different thought experiments--like, ways to visually depict Wall Streeters as bank robbers--that help equate white collar crime with its more violent cousin. I also liked the personal stories, and his description of how the $700 billion bailout bill was passed was eye-opening. Finally, he talks a lot about America's glorification of capitalism, including why we equate Jesus and religion with capitalism. I liked the film, and hope it comes out a success like Farenheit 9/11. I also need to watch Sicko, which I think I missed and certainly has a lot to say about our country's health crisis.

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about job security and my career and my future--and by a lot I mean not enough. Frankly, journalism isn't the greatest field to be getting into. People are doing it for free. There's also a lot of talk about changes and shutdowns and layoffs that occur periodically and stress me out. My plan before, when I heard this four and six months into the job, was that I have money saved and I will travel the world, something I never got to do, and then come back when the recession is over. Although now having a boyfriend complicates everything. I really hope that my job, and those of other magazines, won't be eliminated--everyone would like to move on at their own time and of their own accord. But I updated my resume tonight slightly, and did some searches for jobs I think I would be interested in. From looking at my resume, it gave me some ideas about how to grow my position. I have the opportunity to really invent things, I think, and break ground in the new media area. But I certainly don't know how to monetize that for the company. I'm trying to think of ways I can excel at what I'm doing, to learn the ropes more aggressively, and break new ground. I have so few peers at my job, so I think I want to seek out more people in my field so I can learn more about the state of the industry. I also did some job searching, for the type of job I would be interested in a year or two from now, since it's understood that my position is not a growth position and would require me to move on. I'm interested in doing qualitative research, like being a moderator or an analyst or what have you. Turns out most of the jobs I found there require much more experience than I have. And some have more quantitative requirements than I would care for. But they seem like they pay well, and most require lots of traveling--which is both a good and a bad thing. I'm really glad that I spent some time--seriously, like an hour max--thinking about my future. It's something I need to do more often and actively, and not out of fear but out of desire for personal growth.

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches!

2009-09-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

Now, the slideshow:

Double-click to see the big-screen version with captions

Brother Visiting!

2009-08-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

My brother is in between terms at Colorado Mountain College, so my Mom booked him a ticket out to New York for four days. He got in late Friday night, exhausted. While he actually got here earlier than he was planned for, it was because my Mom put his name down wrong, as Matt S--- Douglas, leading to a huge mess that proved difficult to change because she did it through Expedia.

He finally got here around 11, and we went to Corner Bistro, where we split a Bistro Burger and had a couple McSorley's. Matt's not 21 yet, but he has a fake ID, which apparently was in our home in Seattle. A week before he came, I called up my Mom and asked her to send it to me so we could go into bars, etc. She did so readily, which Matt and I both thought was hilarious. That would NOT have flown when I was twenty and three-quarters. We went to a Belgian Beer Bar, Vol de Nuit, in the Village after, and kind of ambled around looking at all the drunkies.

The next morning we went to Murray's Bagels, then walked down the High Line (which I LOVE). We then proceeded to walk all the way to the tip of Manhattan via the Hudson River Park, in ninety degree heat. I can't believe we did it. I was surprised that Matt was able to stand it, because most visitors aren't used to walking so much and get tired more quickly than the "natives," but Matt's been walking up some big hills, he doesn't have a car, and he's at 6,000 feet, which definitely prepped him for the walk. I checked later and it was about 3 miles--I figure we walked about 4 including our roundabout way and a couple detours.

We then took the Staten Island Ferry, which I had never done before. It leaves every half hour, which is quite convenient. The 3:30 pm ferry was packed with a million tour groups. We had to fight to see the Statue of Liberty. We decided to walk around a bit on Staten Island, but that was a mistake. There was nothing there. He wanted to get a drink in this one pub, a sketchy old man bar, but I knew the Lower East Side awaited so I steered him away. We took the 5pm ferry back to Manhattan.

As I was contemplating how we were going to take the subway to the Lower East Side (there's no direct way), I suddenly saw a sign for the M15 bus, and in a stroke of genius realized it would take us where we needed to go. Fabulous. The cold air zonked Matt out. We grabbed a couple mojitos and some chips and dip at Le Cubain, which just opened, and then Rita arrived just as we were leaving. We decided to go do some more happy hours and then head up to the sushi place by Anna's old apartment that I had never been to but was touted as "good and surprisingly reasonable." We went to Pianos, which was a bit too loud and Matt & Rita accidentally ordered a beer that wasn't in happy hour, that took a couple of tries before the waitress fixed our bill (The magic words: "I think there was a miscommunication..." which I think worked because I didn't assign blame). We then went to Iggy's which was amazing. We had a hilarious bartender (who later gave us his "card") and Rita made friends with the Jewish couple next to us. We ordered some weird shot that the bartender described as a "Red Headed Slut but with x instead of y" don't remember exactly, and Rita was joking that there should be a shot called "Big Jewish" something or the other. They met on Fire Island years ago, and told her that she should go there for the day, at least. We had a few drinks/beers/shots each, and the bar tab was on the high side for my eyes, but I am trying to be better about spending money, so I signed away. We then went up to Sapporo East on 10th and 1st, but first made a detour into a liquour store (my idea...maybe after looking at the bar tab??) to buy some SoCo, and then we bought some cokes at a deli next door. We went into an alley to fill them up. It was amazing. Drunkenness: accomplished. We had to wait about a half hour for a table, so it was good we had some drinks to sip on. We ordered some pretty good rolls and this creamy, warm crab and avocado appetizer thing. I was drunk, happy, and now full. Though I normally cab it or take the subway from there, for some reason all three of us walked home. Rita had forgotten her keys so she slept over. I drank lots of water (It didn't entirely work...).

That morning, at like 8, I looked over and Rita was gone. I thought she was in the bathroom. But then a half hour passed and I realized she went home. I called my phone from Matt's phone, found it, then texted Rita to see if she was okay, to which she responded "No one home but safely eating a sammy in the park." I thought that was ridiculous, and said so. Then I went back to sleep. I woke up a couple times, and eventually realized that we would not be making the 11am tour of the Lower East Side. I eventually roused my brother out of bed. We went to La Bonbonnerie for brunch, a diner that I adore for its surroundings and service more than its food. I ordered the Challah French toast and two eggs (the latter were a little excessive, but I like to get my protein). It was delicious. We then took the A train to Jay St./Borough Hall, and got out and walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was so crowded and soooo hot. The views were beautiful. I was pleased that I got to do some new things with my brother--the ferry and the bridge--because as much as I like showing people around, I like doing new things too. We got off the bridge and I got us slightly lost before we veered into Chinatown.

Matt got some inari sushi, which was surprisingly delicious (it's also really cheap--bean curd with rice inside). I got my coconut water, and we got some starburst-like chinese candies that my brother really likes. We wandered into this park in Chinatown that I had never been to before that was really cool. There were a couple bands of musicians playing on all their Chinese instruments. In the park there were all these people playing this game with checkers-like pieces and boards of dots connected by lines, and groups of people would gather around to watch the game. It was about 90% people who live in Chinatown, 10% tourists with guidebooks. Considering Canal Street is about the reverse proportion, it was refreshing to get a sense of this community in an entirely different light. I went to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory to get some red bean ice cream (pretty good, slightly bland), and then we scouted out for bathrooms and settled for a nasty McDonald's. I took Matt to Joe's Shanghai, where I also brought my parents, and we ordered some Soup Dumplings. They seat you at tables with other people you don't know (something that freaked out my Mom the first time we were there). We were sitting with a couple and this single army-looking guy, when a single tourist was seated at our table. She seemed very confused about why she wasn't being seated at an empty table, and introuduced herself and apologized for interrupting. We explained that we all didn't know each other. It was nice to know the rules and be able to explain them--I also like that this place is so friendly to single diners.

It was soo hot, and we were nearing the end of our adventure. We walked up Little Italy briefly, then over a block, where we stumbled upon this Banh Mi place I had heard about but never been to. It's in the back of a jewelery store, and the sandwiches are huge and $3.75 and delicious. Matt and I split one. Mmmm. We then took the subway back, where my brother has proceeded to fall asleep for the past three hours. Mad Men starts in 45 minutes. I can't wait.

Matt leaves Wednesday morning--we're planning on going to a Mets game and spend another evening hanging out with my boyfriend, who was away this weekend at Phish shows. It's supposed to be over 90 again the next couple days. Argh.

Mid-weekend Hoegaardens

2009-08-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite beer:

I have been drinking it all summer it seems. I have always been a fan of belgian beers, and especially sweet hefeweizens. I'm kind of a Blue Moon person, but I don't like that it's owned by a big brewery (coors). Hoegaarden is the real deal. I just had three in Central Park, courtesy of a $14 deli 6-pack. We went to this free 200 guitars show, but it was so crowded we couldn't even get close enough to see the 200 guitars so we decided to go drink in Central Park on a giant rock. After three beers, I really had to pee, so I also did my first au naturel pee in Central Park. Considering I chased a rat away from that park last week, I didn't feel so bad about peeing underneath a pine tree, especially given Joanna's go-ahead.

Yesterday we went out for happy hour on Smith Street in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The first bar we went to, in particular, was great. I had an excellent $3 hefeweizen and a $5 moscow mule, which was ginger beer and vodka. We went to a tiki bar afterwards and split a scorpion, which I love because the center lights on fire. Then we went to Gowanus Yacht Club (the name is ironic...) for a final hefeweizen. I hadn't eaten dinner and I got home and ate homemade hummus and leftover microwaved thai food and felt too full (much the way I do tonight, after finishing the rest of the hummus).

I slept almost 11 hours--I think I was a bit sleep-deprived--and hung out, trying to get rid of my headache, for a couple hours. I ate some yogurt and honey and had a fake-bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on wheat bread, along with some iced tea. That started to do the trick.

When I went for a run it was kind of a fail. Turns out that my normal run route was covered with fire trucks, police vehicles, and the like, because a plane collided with a helicopter in the Hudson. Before I left my roommate told me about it, since they had been on the High Line some time after it happened, but I decided to go anyway. I'll admit I was curious about what the rescue operation would look like, and the press, etc. It made for an interesting walk, but my run was cut slightly short.

I also went to the light choice (TLC) for the first time today, and their soft serve is sooo good. I definitely will go back there, especially now that I have subscribed to their twitter feed to get additional discounts. I am such a nerd.

Also, today I bought antlers. I was walking back from my run and one of the brownstones on my block was having a stoop sale (think that's what they call them here). I had just seen an interior design piece that featured antlers, and there was a pair. They were A DOLLAR. I had her save them for me and went back to the apartment to get my wallet. They are now sitting on my shelf, and look so cool!!! She called them "quirky" and they definitely add an unusual feel to my bedroom. Since it's so girly, I think it looks cool to have a slightly masculine accent. And I feel okay about the animal thing since I certainly didn't kill the animal, it doesn't look endangered, and if you do kill an animal you might as well make use of all of it.

Tomorrow I don't have much planned--but still enjoying this fabulous, rather mild August weather.

What would the Central Park rat say?

2009-08-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

I just finished one of those fabulous, New York City weekends, the kind where you look at yourself from afar and think how you could be a character in one of those chick lit books or, of course, SATC. I think this was mainly because I managed to maintain a pretty upbeat mood throughout the weekend, and get drunk three times, including twice in one day. Friday I went to my friend Max's birthday party at 675 Hudson, which is in the Meatpacking District, an area I normally avoid due to the preponderance of Jersey girls in stilettos tottering through the streets and a general aura of tooliness. However, this place (the basement of Vento), was trying to be a Lower East Side dive bar. Styled in the same manner as a 1970's rec room, with little alcoves where you could play connect four or board games, it was a fun, chill place. I liked that the alcoves were quieter so you could talk, and then the main area was louder and allowed for some dancing. Despite only know a couple of people, I managed to talk and chat until Julia and her boyfriend and roommate showed up drunk and two and a half hours after I got there. They bought me a drink and I rallied. I made friends with this hipster DJ who lives in Bushwick and had to fend off his advances and let him know I had a boyfriend (He still asked if I wanted "to have some fun.") Silly boy. We ended up the night at around 3 or 3:30 am at Park, another place by me that proved much nicer than expected. It was just the sort of night I would have if I were single, and it was nice to know I could still do that and enjoy it even as part of a couple.

Saturday Jess, Evelyn, and later Julia and I went to Central Park. I brought some hummus and cucumber and a bottle of prosecco, Jess brought wine, and Evelyn brought ciabatta and brie. The hummus was really spicy (Sabra supremely spicy--highly recommend) and it was hot out so I kept on having to drink more wine to get rid of the spiciness. All in all, I ended up quite tipsy. I also successfully chased off a rat--it literally jumped and scampered back into the bushes. Take that, rat. I had never picnicked in Central Park before and I definitely plan to do it again.

After rehydrating, we ended up going out later to Rusty Knot (fake, nautical-themed dive bar--by me :) ) and Tortilla Flats. Fun.

Today Rita came over and we played cards, got bagels at Murray's, and walked on the High Line (LOVE). I went for a run this evening along the Hudson River that left me feeling tired in that really good, refreshed way. I am so happy that this weekend I spent a lot of time with my friends (I love you all!). I've come to realize that I'm a more social person than I thought, and I start to get depressed if I have too much time to myself. Friday night I was not in the mood to go out, but it ended up being so great--I think I need to push myself more to meet up with friends. I'm so lucky to have a manageable work schedule, to the point where I can have more alone time than I want--or time with television/movies/books. I'm seriously getting so bored and sick of all these STORIES. Maybe because it's my job, but I find that I have NO attention span for television or movies (books, more so). I can read newspaper articles still just fine. All the stories can depress me--make me feel like I'm living and experiencing all these other lives when I want to be experiencing MINE.

Eric is coming home tomorrow, so I get to see him after my screening of Julie & Julia (a movie I am quite excited about!)

Chicago, Upper Silver Lake, and NYC again

2009-07-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Last week I flew out to Chicago for the week. I went up to Upper Silver Lake in Michigan for most of it. My grandparents have a cottage up there that I've been coming up to since I was a kid, and I hadn't had the chance to visit for two years. That was the highlight of the trip--though I am jealous the 90-100 degree weather in Seattle did go East to Michigan. Although I was limited to my carry-on suitcase, I found some great dishes and a lamp that was TWO DOLLARS. It is an antique milk glass lamp, absolutely gorgeous (though it needs a lampshade, which will cost approximately six times the cost of the lamp, of course). I had been eyeing a lamp that my grandma had like that, so I was thrilled to find my own!

One of the big highlights of the week was my cousins' graduation party. So many of my relatives were there, including ones I hadn't seen for a long time. We kind of grouped off into young and old, and it was fun to talk about more mature things with my cousins and their friends. Growing up I was a couple years (and a few degrees of sheltered) younger than my cousins Katie and Maggie, but now we connect perfectly, which is great. We can just pick up where we left off. My cousin Colleen, who is my age, brought her boyfriend of at least two years (I think three). They both have Down Syndrome, and are a joy to watch together. They were slow dancing in the pool, and just in general really enjoying each other's company. Whenever I see that kind of joy (and how Colleen is so able to brighten my mood), I think about how babies with trisomy 23 are often aborted nowadays. I have really mixed feelings about eliminating people that in my opinion benefit society and bring out the best in people--the ability of those around them to nurture and be compassionate, and the ability of those with Down Syndrome to bring joy to the world by showing us how to revel in its simplicity.

We got to the party at around 5pm, and stayed until 3am. I was shocked. I kept on expecting my Mom to say she was tired and wanted to go home, but I guess the wine and conversation kept her buzzed. When we left, Maggie had already fallen asleep. We seriously were the last people to leave, minus the people who were staying the night. My Mom and some of our relatives got into this long, hilarious, swear-filled diatribe against another one of our relatives right before we left. Kate and I were just laughing in shock. It was worth being tired and hungover the next day on my flight home...

I was so excited to be reunited with Eric. Seriously, it was so great. All week I had been going over our relationship to various relatives, to the point where I was like, is this really how I feel? But being back with him, I was like 'yep.' One of his friends was driving in from Philly so she picked me up from the Marine Air Terminal (a very weird one...) at LaGuardia and we all hung out. I was so dehydrated, and all I could stomach was these amazing New Jersey tomatoes with salt and pepper. I think I ended up eating two tomatoes worth of slices. Amazing. After his friend left Eric made whole red snapper wrapped in all these herbs. I looked on his computer later and he had done all this research about how to tell if the fish was fresh--he bought them in Chinatown for $5 each and apparently there actually was a great degree of difference in freshness. We had that and corn on the cob on the balcony and looked at the city. It was so romantic and I was so happy to be with him again! Later on that evening there was this ridiculous thunderstorm (earlier there was hail). Because it was dark we could see lighting illuminate entire clouds. It was one of the coolest things I'd seen lately. I'm glad I flew in earlier that day...

This week I've been getting back in the swing of things--I went for a run tonight, checked out some books and made plans for a solo weekend (Eric[s in Red Rocks, Colorado :( ). Eric and I booked our flight to COSTA RICA this November (we're going the week of Thanksgiving). I saw Pedro Almodovar's new film Broken Embraces (I like), Funny People (meh), and saw Tim Burton at MoMa. A pretty cool week for work, though I'm waiting to screen footage from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs before I interview the directors, and it's not happening, so I've been idle and dreading the fact that my deadline is getting tighter and tighter, and not being able to do anything about it.

No need to cry over Wilco; Schroon Lake!

2009-07-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

It was funny that Laura posted about being crazy emotional last week. Because yesterday I did that too. And although the level of crying was pretty exceptional, now that I think about it, I have been prone to crying spells, even after I thought I had adjusted to the bc pills. They all feel pretty justified, though, so I'm not sure if it's me or the hormones, or just specific situations I've been in lately. I tend to cry not when something sad happens or if I get hurt, but when I am frustrated or feel helpless or in sympathy to some injustice.

Anyway, one of my pet peeves is lateness. I have gotten in fights with people over being late, because I think it's rude and disrespectful and I also really worry about missing things if I am not somewhere on time, and I hate waiting awkwardly alone by myself. Waiting sucks. So I don't even feel like re-hashing the whole situation, but it involved me waiting for someone, her being significantly late, which made us in turn miss the three other people we were supposed to meet underground in the subway where there was no cell phone access. When we finally got in cell phone touch, my boyfriend started yelling at me (before I handed it off to my friend) and made me think they had in fact waited for us, and we had left without them.

And then, I was sobbing on the subway. I couldn't stop, and then I felt so embarrassed I was crying more. I had actually been trying to be more patient for people lately, and cutting them some slack before I started to get angry, and this had utterly backfired. And I had waited pointlessly, since she was in the bleacher section and I was on the floor, so it didn't even matter if we met up. I think part of the reason I cried so much was because I really needed some kind of expulsion of emotion, and the only other alternative was to yell at my friend, and I just couldn't do that.

So the actual concert (yes, that's where I was going) was fun. Eric & I ended up being by ourselves for the opening set of Yo Lo Tengo, and he really cheered me up, and then two other people showed up and my other friend and all was well. Wilco put on a good show. I like their more lyrical songs, of which they only played a few (maybe there only are a few). Feist and Grizzly Bear showed up towards the end to sing and do maracas, etc. (more indie bands that I actually like a bit more...). The show was at Coney Island, where I'd never been, so we went down to the water after the concert which was fun, and went for a second round of Nathan's, getting a fish platter and a softshell crab sandwich. When I arrived before the show I had part of a cold chili dog (the casing is very firm and you have to punch your teeth through it) and this huge super-size beer that Eric bought. I was surprised that I wasn't hungry after the show (though of course I nibbled on our food), until I saw the posted calorie counts for the beer. The one I had before the show was over 600 calories!! Most chain New York City restaurants are required to do that now, but since I don't frequently eat in chains I haven't seen the damage. Lordy. I can't believe beer is so caloric.

I had a big breakfast today but no lunch...still recovering from a long weekend of overeating.

But, before it becomes too late: Fourth of July at Schroon Lake!!
Eric and I made some last-minute plans for the Fourth last weekend, and came up with an amazing rate for a one-bedroom cottage ($240 for three nights, when normally it goes for at least double). His family friend let us borrow their car, so we took the NJ Transit out to pick it up and made the four-ish hour drive up. We got there at 1am, and almost went into the wrong cabin.

The cottage was decorated the way all cottages should: lots of wildlife references, hand-me-down style furniture and glasses, and wood paneling. It was awesome. We went to some random diner (Black Bear) in the morning, and picked up groceries and alcohol for the trip.

Friday and Saturday (the 4th) were both iffy, weather-wise. The skies would be blue, but every time a huge cumulus cloud would come over, the temperature would drop noticeably. It also rained on and off. Friday night Eric made ribs on the grill, we had some drinks, and went out in a rowboat. There was some kind of Christian Rodeo going on that we could hear from the lake, and we got quite a giggle out of that. And did a little making out, etc., on the lake, in the rowboat, which was wonderful and romantic.

Saturday and Sunday morning we ate breakfast on the deck by the water (bagels one day, eggs the other). On the Fourth of July, Eric made burgers that were the BEST EVER. They were soooo good. We had to use our neighbor's grill because ours wasn't getting hot enough, but in the process they complimented our idea to grill the onions (so necessary) and invited us out on their boat the next day. Fabulous. The night of the fourth it was FREEZING outside. No longer raining so much, but so incredibly cold. I bundled up in front of the fire Eric made for awhile as it got dark, and then he was all childlike and anxious over the fireworks so we went to this park area where we had seen some fireworks the night before. Unfortunately, we couldn't see the town's fireworks from that vantage point, but luckily some pyro teenagers and perhaps their parents had their own fireworks show. I love fireworks shows done homestyle, because people are generally more appreciative, you're RIGHT THERE, and there's always pyro people laughing and saying "dude, that was awesome."

When we got back we made s'mores. Yum. And no mommy telling me how many s'mores to have.

Sunday the weather was fabulous. Eric had been wanting me to play hooky from work on Monday, but I am against using sick days unless you are actually sick (guilt/superstition), and we were closing a big issue and I had stories due. I am actually happy we ended there on such a fabulous, sunny (and for me, sunburned note).

The man next door and his family had been coming to the lake their whole lives, so they took us on a tour and explained all about the area, pointed out places they had stayed, and all the awesome lake houses. One had a water trampoline and one of those air-filled pillow launchers, multiple jet-skis and other boat toys, and a fleet of white SUVs in their driveway. There was something about the white SUVs that really pushed everything over-the-top. Did their family coordinate or something?

I took off my cast and swam that afternoon, which was great, until we asked our neighbors if we could use the water trampoline and I accidentally did a butt jump and supported weight with my hand. It HURT so badly, and I was so upset with injuring myself more. I had to get out of the water a bit after that.

I had such an amazing time with Eric. We got along well the whole time (I think we might have had like a thirty-minute period of disagreement--oh, and did I mention we handled a flat tire (our second) successfully?). The lake was so quiet and romantic and it got me excited for my upcoming trip to Chicago and Michigan, where my grandparents have a cottage on a lake. I didn't think I really needed to get away, but I am so glad that we went. It was just so much fun!

Sad face :(

2009-06-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of depressed the past couple of days. Normally I relish solitude and alone time, but if I suddenly have a lot of free time after being crazy busy, I just feel lost and depressed.

Added to that: I have been in physical pain all week after a rollerblading accident, unable to do things that would have distracted me, and Eric is gone at Bonaroo for a week, making me even more lonely.

The accident: I adore Hudson River Park, and was rollerblading on my new, fast rollerblades. It was extremely crowded. There are all these sewer grates you need to swerve around, and at every pedestrian crossing there are bricks, some of which you can glide right over, and others that are basically 19th century cobblestones due to wear. I approached a crosswalk (at 34th st) going too fast, which I knew, because I saw a rollerblader on my right who had totally stopped and was going around it. In retrospect, I would have tried to do a U-ie stop even if I had to cut off bikers, etc., going in the other direction. But I didn't. I decided to brace myself and plow right through. But the next thing I knew I flew forward, banana-peel style, landing on my butt and tailbone, and had broken my fall with my right (a bit) and my left (a lot) wrist. I lay there in shock for a minute or so, dumbly nodding when people asked if I was okay, then went over to a park bench for another few minutes before the pain and a vague stress/shock related queasiness passed.

I iced and was super careful (though I forgot about my tailbone, and thus had a hard time walking the next few days--I have huge bruises on my ass, including a big purple one that's half-hidden and my boyfriend at first thought was poo (haha)). I was going to just deal, based on what my Dad told me, however, on the advice of my co-workers and gchatters, who regaled me with horror stories about permanent loss of function, I went in. I actually had an incredible health care experience (all the doctors I see make me wait forever, and my GP just gives me referrals, and I am still mad at my gyno for totally ignoring my requests for generic b.c., so now I am on a pill that costs me three times as much but works so now I don't want to switch).

I found the Beth Israel orthopedists, called the hand/wrist line, they said they could squeeze me in THAT MORNING, I waited less than fifteen minutes, had a really professional doctor. The walls were like The Palm, covered with autographs of famous hockey players, actors, and politicians. Crazy. I found out I broke a small bone in my left hand, my palm really, and I needed to wear an immobilizer for 5-6 weeks. Yesterday I went in for a CT scan (again, very professional and quick) which confirmed. In a way, my Dad was right, because if I had done nothing and used the immobilizer I also would have gotten better, but I might have ended up going in anyway when it didn't get better right away. I have trouble pressing the shift and control button with my pinky and then hitting another button to capitalize or whatever, but I've been adapting. Already the pain has gone down a lot, and I'm hoping next week I can run without killing my tailbone area. I tried to put my gym membership on hold but that has been so much phone tag, etc., so I'm frustrated about that.

And I miss Eric. We hung out Monday before he left, but we've only texted a few times, and I had to be like "call me, I want to hear about the trip," which he did almost immediately after I asked. But what I really want is someone to take care of me :( :(

Parents, meet New York City

2009-06-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

My parents finally visited this weekend, after living in NYC for a year and a half. Neither of them had really been to NYC before (my Mom twice, my Dad NEVER!!!!! Can you believe it? And he's actually decently well-traveled), so I think a lack of familiarity, work obligations, cost (since they had to stay in a hotel instead of with me), and my brother still living at home were factors that prevented them from visiting me. Actually, it was probably my brother, since they booked a ticket within a month of him leaving. Ha. Oh! and the boyfriend. They definitely wanted to investigate once they found out I had a boyfriend. As if I weren't reason enough!!

They stayed at The Benjamin Hotel on 50th and Lex, which turned out to be a great choice since it's right by the E and the 456 trains. I really wanted them to stay somewhere nice, and thanks to priceline it was super affordable...though they had to upgrade when I wanted to stay with them, oops, so that might have brought them back to normal.

We did so much. Thursday they flew in and we had dinner, with my boyfriend, as Sip Sak. The food was incredible - I had some kind of lamb thing over smoked eggplant puree, incredible appetizers, and turkish wine, and they got to meet Eric.

I stayed with them that night, and Friday we went to Murray's Bagels (by me) for breakfast, then I showed them my apartment. I had talked it down so much, they were like "This is SO nice!" I was hoping they would think it was worse since I am sick of how small it is, but whatever.

Then we went through Chelsea Market, got some Amy's Bread and a Wich Craft brownie, and after I wanted to show them the High Line, which is this park built on an elevated train track. Turns out it's not open yet, but we went up to the third floor of The Standard, which is very chic and modern and has these weird art elevators that make it seem like you're going to heaven or hell depending on if you're going up or down, to take a look at what it will be like.

It was a bit misty, and we walked south on the Hudson River Park, through Battery Park City, literally all the way to the World Trade Center. This is like a few miles. A long walk. My Dad took all these pictures, because whatever, he wanted to do it, then we did more Wall Street looking around, then hopped a cab to Chinatown to eat at Joe's Shanghai. On the way there, we were stuck behind Prince Harry's motorcade! (I'm foreshadowing here, because the Prince will return.)

Had some delicious soup dumplings, some coconut water from the street, then we headed back to the hotel for a bit, had a glass of wine, then grabbed some halal cart before we saw In the Heights. After the play, I was starving, not having eaten much halal, so we got some banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery (I have already researched the recipe to make myself) and some pizza. Night!

Saturday, we met Eric for brunch at Shopsin's, this famous place, now in Essex Market, for its grumpy chef and huge menu with unlikely pairings. I had some coconut pancakes with an egg burrito that had cranberry salsa on top (sooo good). I also ate some of Eric's pancakes. The slutty cakes (pumpkin, peanut butter, pistachios, cinnamon) were outrageously good, as were there cinnamon raisin apple pancakes that appeared to have been soaked in cinnamon sugar liquid until they were plump and delicious.

Eric played tour guide for awhile, showing them around. My feet were hurting and I was super hot in my tight jeans (both ways, I assure you), so we went back to Eric's apartment. I did NOT really want my parents coming up there, both because I think Eric has bachelor pad shabbiness (though an incredible, spacious apartment, balcony, and view. I am so tough), and because I have a lot of stuff around there and didn't care for the allusion to sex (we don't talk that much about that stuff, though my mother did make veiled references until I finally had to tell her I am on birth control. Lawd.). However, he sent them to the East River Park first, we had a bit of cleanup/alone time, and all was well.

Then we decided to go to Governor's Island. There's a free ferry, you can walk around, nice little views. We go. There's a huge backup, and tons of police, so my Mom asks why. Well, we're right by a heliport and President Obama is coming this evening. Wow.

Then we just make the ferry, and get off, to find out there's a polo match going on for Prince Harry's charity. We watch the Prince play some polo, then walk around the blisteringly hot island. As we're going around the back, we run into tons of VIPs (I later find out Madonna, Kate Hudson, et al were there, but I didn't see them in their hats and sunglasses). Nice.

We go to Agave in the Village for dinner, and there are all these NYPD helicopters around. The Obamas (who were dining at Blue Hill before going to Joe Turner's Come and Gone). Walk around the West Village, drowsy from margaritas, sleep.

Sunday! Go to a diner, EJ's Luncheonette, on the Upper West Side, then meander around Central Park for hours. Go on a tour. Central Park is BIG! I get a little cranky from the heat and my feet hurt. Resolve to go to the gym more often.

We go back to the hotel for some wine, then head down to Otto for dinner. I had this delicious shaved fennel pizza that I ordered, then some puttanesca and a margherita that my parents ordered. And some amazing gelato for dessert. My parents walked me back to my apartment, where I slept that night, and I did some heavy relaxing. I met them the next day for lunch, we went to Baogette for some banh mis (I think I converted them. Try them! Spicy Vietnamese sandwiches. They are amazing).

I very much enjoyed doing nothing Monday night.

New York City, filming hot spot

2009-05-15T08:54:00.001-07:00

There have been SO many films shoots taking place recently. I suppose that many projects have been waiting for slightly warmer weather to start shooting, but on my block alone, West 15th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue, there have been three film shoots in the past month. First, there was the "Untitled Nora Ephron Project," which was shooting in Chelsea Market. According to a crew member I asked, the film is set in LA. Fancy that.

Next, there was The Baster, which stars Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston. For that shoot, I actually had to wade through some paparazzi on the way back from the supermarket. Kind of exciting, I suppose. I have no idea where they’re filming, though, since it seems my block is more of a parking lot for star trailers than an actual shooting location. I saw The Baster a couple days later on my way home from work, shooting deeper in the West Village, so I’m sure at least a couple of recognizable locations will be in the works.

Earlier this week, I saw some kind of production that was like “Obsession” or some kind of lustful, packed noun. They were setting up the camera (in the rain  ) when I left for work so I felt kind of bad.

Then yesterday and today I saw Twelve shooting. On Sunday night, walking home from the F train, I saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They were shooting a car chase scene on 14th St, and even though it was 11pm the whole area was lit up with film lights, there were TWO cranes (i.e. very expensive). I walked home alone 15th st, and saw all the cars they must have been using (or were about to use) for shooting. There were some sick Ferraris, Mercedes, and a bunch of taxis. It was pretty cool, and a lot of people were taking camera phone pictures. Last week a car chase in Times Square went awry and injured a couple people, so I'm glad that they weren't filming anything when I was walking by.

On my walk to work over the past month, I’ve also seen police officers towing cars for an upcoming shoot of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (which, like The Baster, I saw a few days later parked in a different location) and “Ugly Betty.”

I can’t quite figure out why I’ve been seeing so many more productions lately. I definitely think that there are more than usual on my own block than last year, since that is something I certainly would have noticed. But I’m sure my tendency to walk instead of take the subway now that I don’t have a monthly pass, as well as my walk to work, has added to the amount of productions I see in action. Since I’m involved in film myself, I love to see all the shoots going.

New York City’s prominence in movies and television, as well as books, is part of the reason I moved here. I liken the experience of moving to NYC, and experiencing all the places I had seen in the movies, to drinking alcohol for the first time, where I was like, “so THIS is what drinking is like!” and proceeded to try to figure out how Hemingway and Fitzgerald could write drunk, which at the time, especially, seemed absolutely bonkers to me. One part I had never picked up in all the references to drinking was that it felt good. It didn’t just make you slur your words and stumble and say stupid things and ease tension, it felt good. In a specific way that you could only understand after being drunk yourself. Similarly, living in NYC is like the movies in some ways, but also so utterly different, that the only way to really understand is to go there and live there yourself.

I still get a pleasure seeing areas I know on film. I rewind my DVR or movie to pinpoint the location exactly, and press freeze to see if I can make out the cross streets. Reality shows, in particular, seem to love the Meatpacking district, which is right around the corner from me. “The City,” “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” and “Stylista” have all used locations just blocks from me. This is what I love about New York City, knowing that I am living on a “set.” Knowing that where I live has been documented and glamorized, whether it's fact or fiction, makes everything so much more awe-inspiring.

Living in New York City is, more accurately, a mix of awe and practicality. Most days I'm dashing by the beautiful buildings and cafes, but every once in awhile I look up, like a tourist, and see everything in a different light. I can walk around with a little spring in my step, and a small smirk of superiority, when I see the Sex and the City bus tour parked around the corner outside of Buddakan, or when I watch Made of Honor, and Patrick Dempsey drives up to the Starbucks on my way to work. And parks. What is he, crazy? Has the movie abandoned all claim to realism? (unfortunate answers: yes, and yes). I love living in a place that's simultaneously a fantasy and a reality, a cultural zeitgeist, and a place that everyone seems to want to make her own.

Why I Love New York: Morning Walk to Work

2009-04-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's finally starting to get nice out. One of the coolest things about New York City is my walk to work. The experience is much more sensory than being in an air conditioned, weatherproof box with piped music--no smells, no faces to look at, no freezing cold, icy rain, or that great balmy feeling of spring. In the morning I always see kids on their way to school (including Sarah Jessica Parker taking her kid to school sometimes, if I'm running late), people walking their dogs (the pee smells TERRIBLE in the summer). On garbage day it also smells terrible, but walking along west 9th st I see the most gorgeous things put out to the curb--if only I had room!

I've also observed the financial crisis. Suddenly, this winter, I saw "Townhouse for Sale" and "For Rent" show up on many private residences. Now, stores are closing. A children's clothing store closed, a woman's boutique shut down, a bath store looks to be in dire straits, and Flight001 keeps on advertising their sales. Balducci's (gourmet grocery store) is closing this week, and I can't think of another thing that can go in the amazing neoclassical building--how many grocery stores have columns, marble, and painted ceilings?

I'm under the impression that until maybe the 1950s, when everything suburbanized, many people would walk to work. I strongly believe that walking to and from work--instead of spending an hour behind the wheel--brought down obesity and stress rates in society. By the time I walk to work, I'm ready and alert. I don't need coffee right away. If I've been feeling stressed during the work day, that twenty minute walk home provides me with a chance to unwind. Since it's the 21st century, I often make phone calls to friends and family. I run errands. I walk. The slight uptick in my weight due to my boyfriend's rich food and birth control notwithstanding, I gradually went from tight-fitting pants to loose pants since I've started the job. Nothing major, but it's positively impacted my well-being. I feel happy and well-connected. I'm not isolated from my world, but experiencing its weather, its sounds, smells, and people. While I've heard that walking in the city is more stressful than walking in nature (and I totally believe that), I can vouch for the fact that walking in the city is WAY better than driving on a highway. My summer of Los Angeles commutes just killed me. I love my commute, and you can check it out on google maps here:

View Larger Map

A feisty weekend

2009-04-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Had a nice, fabulous weekend with the bf. Despite a nagging cold that left me tired and periodically napping/apologizing for being tired and saying 'no' to everything/unattractively blowing my nose, we really packed things in!

Friday I napped, then went over to bf's house. It was late and I was feeling very low blood sugar so we just had some whole foods artichokes with aioli on french bread, and I had some prepared blood orange ham he had bought. Normally we cook together so this was a bit of a change. Later I ate the rest of his haagen dazs. I am evil.

Saturday we hung out, then went and walked over to Chinatown for some dim sum. I have always wanted to do dim sum, but was under the impression that you needed a lot of people. Untrue. We went to a pretty low-key place, ordered maybe 5-7 dishes, random dumplings and some beef noodles. Eric ordered a couple of fried things that were cold, so I totally won in the ordering department. Fried shrimp wrapped in bacon just isn't that good cold. Due to my cold, I drank pretty much the whole pot of tea. Overall, the place wasn't stellar, but I tried something new that I liked (siu mai: open shrimp and pork dumplings) and we took cute photos of each other. And after that, because we are huge gluttons around each other, we went to Doughnut Plant, which has these amazing gourmet donuts. I like cake ones, so I got a strawberry (REAL strawberry pieces included) glazed cake donut and Eric got the blackout. I was desperately consuming sugar in an attempt to stay awake.

Eric had been emailing people on craigslist to get last-minute tickets to Prarie Home Companion that evening at Town Hall in the theater district. At the last minute, he got them for $20 each (much less than the $67 each face, plus those random fees). We high-tailed it but it took almost ten minutes for us to get a cab. We ended up taking one of those fake cabs. Usually they rip you off but when I said $15 he agreed. Times must be tough. Eric gave him $20 anyway. We were 15 minutes late to the show, which started at 5:45, but got there just in time for the real radio show to start up. It was kind of funny because all the skits/songs were about life in New York (I was particularly fond of a song called 'coffee') and one of the couples skits was so like us it was funny, we kept on looking at each other laughing.

Then we went home and made some shrimp scampi and I watched a Bobby Flay on Pad Thai since I had just made it last week and was curious about the sauces they would use. And went to bed early because we WERE GOING HIKING TOMORROW.

Eric's friend picked us up a little after 8am (he's a trader and has to get up early, and apparently that extends to the weekend). It was nice tunes and smooth sailing up to Bear Mountain. His friend Joe was telling us about a grilled cheese restaurant he's in the process of opening so I put in my two cents (of course). The day was absolutely gorgeous and one of the warmest this spring, but the real reason I was sweating 10 minutes into our hike was because a) we were going up a STEEP mountain, b) I was carrying a cup of coffee, c) I was wearing Eric's fleece and fleece gloves. There were some gorgeous views of the Hudson River, and we climbed over 1,000 feet, and celebrated with these huge, New Jersey sandwiches that were truly out of this world. Fresh mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, turkey. Yum. I had some of the Italian red meat sandwich Eric had and it was delicious but I am glad I didn't have to eat that whole thing. On the way down we basically had to scramble down all these rocks, just huge slabs of rock you had to count on your rubber shoes to grip you so you wouldn't fall down. I am SO glad that we didn't come up that way. I would have died. I was incredibly exhausted, and because Joe lived in New Jersey he dropped us off at the train station on the way home since it was easier for him. We took a brief ride, then got on the subway, so it took an extra hour just to go through the city. Always funny how that works--once you get to the huge, dense mass of people you can only go so fast through it. We relaxed for a few hours, then I walked over to my book club.

Evelyn, Jess, Anna, and Julia were there when we arrived. It was at this nice, new bar called the Donnybrook (on the Lower East Side), that has an English/Irish pub theme going, a little white illuminated light by the stairs that says W.C., etc.. They don't have a kitchen yet so Julia brought some banana bread, which I thought was really nice of her. Rita and Sahar showed up a bit later. Our discussion was great--we read three short stories, one by Poe, one by Kafka, and one by Woody Allen. I have been lacking for mental stimulation and all three of these were the brain exercise I needed--and discussing them was so much fun. I ended up staying almost three hours. Our talk devolved into a little bit of that Sex and the City-type discussion, and snippets included: gynecologists, and why some of them stick their fingers up your butt, why someone thinks her ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend is faking cancer to get him back with her, how our health center used to think all the young black women needed to be tested for AIDS since "sooo many young black women have AIDS," what we were talking about while drunk two weeks ago during St. Patrick's Day, and surely a few other tidbits that made us decide that this was why our book club was going to remain all women. It was absolutely hilarious, and even though people were coming and going we always felt like we had a cohesive group. I'm looking forward to many more book clubs. I brought Rita back to Eric's because she had bought me my Hoegarten but we had stopped after one round. We had some leftover shrimp scampi, chili, and some candied/crystallized ginger that Eric had made while I was gone. It was really good, nice strong grown-up candy, and I definitely want to learn how to make it.

And today? I didn't bring an umbrella to work, and my oatmeal exploded in the microwave, twice, leaving me with a very small breakfast, that I supplemented with candied ginger. Yoga tonight, DVR, and lots, lots of sleep.

As the pendulum swings!

2009-03-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

I totally called this. The Huffington Post (which I don't read), the website that writes about originally researched news articles and explains them the way your friend would: opinionated, with a point of view, will now CREATE journalism.

Awhile back, as I was thinking of the future of my job, and the tension right now between blogs and newspapers. The problem is that newspapers put a lot of time and money into their articles, and then earn money through subscribers and ad revenues. Blogs put very little time and money into their pieces, but can turn a profit by writing "voiced" opinions of the news.

I predicted that blogs would cannibalize on newspapers until they no longer existed, and there was no more original content to mine. Then, in order to survive themselves, they would need to come up with original ideas themselves. With journalism and its big budgets already flaming out, the new projects would be on a smaller and more manageable scale (or, in this twist, funded by a non-profit). Journalism will rise from the ashes; a baby instead of a Jabba the Hut, overgrown menace.

I see this happening more than once, as blogs struggle with the investments they must make to create original content, that in turn are cannibalized by other blogs. There will definitely be a few pendulum swings before everything settles. I even see subscriber-based New York Times as within purview; I know personally I cannot live without my newspaper, and if the subscription is cheap and information again becomes barrier-based, I will need to pay money to cross the barrier.

Oh, journalism.

Goal: improve elderly-level memory

2009-03-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

I've felt like I've been getting dumber for some time now, in a very specific way. This blog post today on the NY Times, about working memory, nailed it.

-I find myself thinking of something to say and then forgetting it: I can't hold a thought in my mind.

-I find it difficult to hold a thought in my mind in order to mull it over.

-I find myself having trouble remembering basic things, and must Google them.

These are all working memory problems. Thankfully, just as it can slip easily (or so it seems to me) it can also be regenerated with some effort. I think my problem with working memory is exacerbated by certain personality/lifestyle attributes.

-I'm no longer in college anymore, forced to do these things.

-I drink and smoke and sometimes try to hold intellectual discussions while doing both of these things (although don't know if I'll give up the wine at the book club, I think that actually still comes out a net positive)

-I am selectively stimulated in my new job. I miss interacting with people, which I don't do as much, and throwing ideas off of them. I can't be awesome in a vacuum. (ha, ha) I need to talk things out. It's annoying, because my job requires the skills I feel are slipping, but it doesn't nurture them, especially given my blog/RSS feed addiction. I totally overcheck those sites instead of working.

I feel like the best analogy is diving, where you need to be incredibly fit and flexible to dive, but actually diving does not work you intensively and long enough in order to make you more fit and flexible. You have to go elsewhere to improve yourself.

I think it's going to be my goal to improve my working memory and the depth of my thoughts.
This is going to include:

-yoga, which I do already. My instructor the other day mentioned that people who practice yoga are more mindful and listen to people when they speak to them. It requires focus and concentration, and it also decreases stress, etc., and a host of other things.

-intensive exercise. and figure out a way to get back into the water. I need to increase blood flow, push myself, and just feel activated and invigorated. I've been running on the treadmill at the gym, and I'm excited to go outside and run and rollerblade once it gets warmer.

-purposely check the ADD tendencies

-be selective about multitasking. Even listening to music, gchatting/working, etc., can be bad when I need to focus. Doing mindless work while listening to "This American Life" (which I do sometimes when I have to do data entry) is okay. And apparently doodling while thinking about something improves concentration, so situationally-dependent multitasking is okay.

-limit the amount of times I check RSS feeds. I will say this yet again.

-DISCIPLINE myself. Just because it crosses my mind to check a blog/email/bank account/that one thing/etc. DOES NOT MEAN I NEED TO DO IT THAT SECOND. More likely, I am stuck on a sentence and want to avoid it rather than buckle down and think of an answer. Knuckle down. It's my new motto.

Of course, it should be mentioned that I am doing this as I prepare to write a 2,000 word piece essentially straight through, due to my procrastination yesterday. Still, I think this was a good piece of time to set aside and think about ways that I have lapsed as of late and ways that I can fix them and be happier and smarter and more engaged in everyday life.

Why abortion is murder I am okay with

2009-03-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

The inspiration for this post comes from two things: one, the documentary I am in the middle of watching, Lake of Fire, and two, the fact that I just read The Easter Parade and a character starts to write an article about her duo of abortions but stops.

I think abortions are an incredibly tricky issue. I have been pro-choice from day one, and while I haven't wavered from that stance, my reasons for staying on this side of the debate have changed drastically.

Here's the first one: I do think that abortion is killing something, so essentially I condone murder. Before, I didn't think of a fetus as alive, just a mass of cells, even though I have seen jarred fetuses before. While watching Lake of Fire right now, they opened a scene with a glass cylinder with a tube attached, kind of a permanent, glass IV. The movie is black and white, but the cylinder abruptly filled with a fluid that could only have been bloody, pulverized mass. The camera pans right, and you see a vagina with a tube inside it. The doctor says, "It's over," and pulls out the speculum-like thing inside the vagina. Twenty weeks.

Then, because the girl was so far along, he puts the bloody mixture on a metal screen, and rinses much of it with water. He tweezes out a foot, an arm, part of the torso and head. He needs to make sure all of the baby got out for the woman's health. It's like a puzzle, like panning for gold.

That's the first operation like that I've ever seen. I assume it's dilation & extraction (or evacuation), the most common abortion procedure. I paused the doc (which, by the way, seems more pro-choice than pro-life) and immediately googled pictures of fetuses, thinking about what I would do if I were in such a situation.

It's hard. I definitely believe there is life in an unborn child, but it's a twilight life, and in between murder. The child is more alive than not, but its first breath, its integration into Earth, and being held and accepted makes it perhaps no more alive, but its existence more real and visceral.

Whenever I think of the question "When does life begin?" I think of a practice of a culture (I've forgotten which one) I studied. The babies there are not named until the seventh or tenth day. If they die before that time, they are treated differently, because they are not fully alive. To me, this seems like a practical way to deal with a high rate of infant mortality, a way to minimize the emotional impact of stillbirths and babies that die shortly after childbirth. It also shows me the range of where "life" begins. Some think it happens even before the egg is fertilized. Some think a soul is floating out there before that. Some it's at birth, some it's at conception.

I think of the legality of abortion, philosophically, as utilitarian. One is able to create more good for the mother at a time one can conveniently distance oneself from what you are truly doing. I think there are circumstances under which almost anyone would murder someone, and the unformed, unknown entity of a fetus is a particularly apt candidate. If murder is simply saying yes, pressing a button (and we know how easy that is to 'execute' from the Holocaust), then many people would do it. And do it.

Here's another thing. Even pro-lifers often hesitate when you ask the question, "If abortion were made illegal, what would you recommend as a punishment for women who have abortions [commit murder]?" No one asks for the death penalty, or even life in prison. They want the woman to recognize what she has done, to repent, to realize she has committed a sin and killed an unborn child. Which almost makes me think that they view abortion as grey murder themselves.

It's difficult to know what one would do in a situation of an unexpected pregnancy. I believe that I would seek an abortion, especially given my current situation, but I think I would also believe that I was doing something wrong and in fact selfish, and putting my needs above that of the other life. Although I think that knowing that I would not be able to provide for my child would make me feel less selfish, and more a statement of my cruel and cold practicality. I also think that if I had one abortion, I would be less inclined to have a second.

Anyway, I find the process of abortion horrific and a sad but necessary part of American society. As long as the right to choose is safe, I actually have an incredibly amount of sympathy for many pro-lifers, especially the ones without the crazy talk about a woman's place and whatnot.

One month

2009-03-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

So I've been dating this boy for one month now, today actually, though I'm not really the type to keep track and celebrate that kind of thing. I like him. After our first weekend together we said we wouldn't date anyone else, which is essentially a bf/gf relationship. But I'm still scared to call him my b*******d. I've tried throwing the word around, and I like the idea of shouting it out from the rooftops in the abstract (i.e. facebook, where all those ex-hookups can see and hopefully be jealous), but the idea of introducing him to strangers as my boyfriend freaks me out. I mean, I guess I'm comfortable having close friends know, but I think what I must be scared of is how I judge couples. I always evaluate to see if they are a good match, if one of them seems to be dating down or up, what they see in each other. I also look at how confident a couple seems with each other, which can influence my judgment, making me care less or care more about a quality that, unmediated, would have a very clear reaction in me.

Anyway, I think I'm almost ready. Soon, soon.

Johari Window freaks me out

2009-02-06T17:10:00.000-08:00

I just learned what the Johari window was, and found it radical (as I do many things in psychology) in taking its premise for granted. I guess what I mean by that is that I still have a problem with psychology explaining the human brain so scientifically.

Here's a Johari Window:

As some may know, I am obsessed by the idea that I am secretly retarded (a flip way of putting it). If I had one secret power, it would be to read people's minds. There are a million reasons for this, that I don't particularly feel like unfolding in a blog post, but it has led me to do and say some pretty silly things. Laura, remember how I used to make you write letters listing all my flaws? I'm laughing out loud just thinking about that. Now that I know about this nifty square, I can just say that I am obsessed with the "blind spot." Nice to have a name for this, huh? I guess this is what they call an heuristic...

Apparently, from my googling, the Johari window is very popular among workplace psychologists, you know, when people have no idea that they are doing a poor job or everyone hates them...

Also, to figure out my blind spot, I found this online thing. You should follow the link and name five adjectives that describe me--I'm curious to find my "blind spot."
http://kevan.org/johari?name=sarista444

Also, rather fittingly, I'm listening to Lady GaGa sing "Poker Face"
p.s. Her album is a Britney Spears level of awesome.

Orgasms N Exercise!

2009-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

So while reading the NY Times Sunday Magazine article about the science of female desire last week, I saw a brief link to orgasm-like feelings after exercise (sadly, since I no longer have access to Wesleyan's medical journal descriptions, I can't read it--I got into reading medical journal articles when I took this one epidemiology class).

I WISHIWISHWISH I could read about this! People talk about running "highs" or whatever, and that's true, but calling something a "high" is a pretty neutral term. YES, it can refer to drug use, but NO, it doesn't conjure up a full-body orgasm or anything. Looking at the abstract more closely, it appears that exercising made people more responsive to sexual imagery, but it wasn't due to the hormonal changes they thought.

As a swimmer, and especially a distance swimmer, I've had times where I inexplicably felt really, really, really good while exercising. It's a giddiness, a euphoria. It matches, but is qualitatively different, to times where I've felt euphoric from caffeine, alcohol, getting really good results on my AP tests in the mail, and, although it's been awhile, sex. I imagine this is under-researched because it's a personal, not shared emotion. While your teammate is in agony it's a bit alienating to slur out "I feel soooo good right now! I'm totally high off this ridiculously hard set!"

While I've had warm fuzzy feelings during exercise and after---usually it takes pretty strenuous exercise to induce it--I have particularly strong memories from my senior year water polo season. Maybe because at that point I'd sampled the various sources of euphoria, I had a different sense of contextualization that made full-body pleasure seem like a simile to orgasm. Anyway, we would have these two-hour, strenuous practices, then I would have to dash over with wet hair (15 minute walk, which I know now from living in New York is 3/4 of a mile) to catch one of the bajillion screenings I had for my Senior Film Seminar. So while changing/walking over/before starting the movie, there were a few times where I felt REALLY, REALLY good. Just like dreamy, stupid smiley, and good allll over. It radiated from me and kind of draped over me and either made the whole world look like Willy Wonka or made me super ebullient and wanting to share my good mood with someone. Kind of like a certain variety of orgasm, but so so much longer lasting. And also kind of like the Little Match Girl before she freezes to death in the snow.

So, while people don't really talk about random acts of euphoria (I contemplated telling my classmates that I felt orgasmic, but reconsidered) unless you're, of course, having sex, it's interesting to see that something so wholesome, like exercise, can produce such a profound reaction in the body. I LOVE it. And what better place to talk about it than in the frankness of the blogosphere?

I felt something like that today, walking home after I interviewed my first movie director over the phone. I had been so nervous, and then it went really well, and I just felt giddy and happy and relieved and it all felt so good.

I think this might mean I'm becoming happier in general.

And do you know what--I've been feeling a lot happier lately, and I've also been doing much more strenuous exercise. Although I've been walking to and from work for five months now (that's 2 miles a day, provided it's not raining really hard or I don't take the subway to a screening after work), and doing yoga a couple times a week, it's only now that I've started running (20+ minutes on a treadmill; funny...that was how long the test subjects were on there...) that my body has really been activated and made use of those pleasure centers (in order to help with the pain of getting back in shape?).

I really like the idea of the body as a machine. I think it's empowering, healthy, etc.. Noticing such a big difference in mood, I definitely think I will work to keep this gym habit going.

Current Food/Alcohol Obsessions

2009-01-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

-I can live on nuts and fruits alone. My eating habits closely resemble that of a squirrel. I also love cracking nuts. I recently went to wine bar Gottino and spent the night splitting a bottle of wine and cracking walnuts and hazelnuts. It’s so much fun! And you can have contests, like who can crack a walnut in the largest pieces. While not a new obsession, Turkish Pistachios (smaller, more intensely flavored) are an old standby, though quality can vary from supplier to supplier (Manhattan Fruit Exchange > Economy Candy), so you have to be careful.

-Wine: Shiraz, Syrah, yum, yum, yum. I will never get tired of Shiraz, my first wine love. Full-bodied, meaty, fruity. It’s how I like it.

-Champagne: I love Chateau St. Michelle. Had it a couple times in the past month or so. I need to visit it when I come back to Seattle! I also recently bought some strip club champagne from a discount wine store (Scores lost their liquor license) so I will have some $7.99 champagne that retails for $250 in tittie land.

-Microwbrews/Craft Ales: I hate the term “microbrew” because it sounds so damn pretentious, but beers produced by small breweries have SO much flavor in them; they’re practically like wines. I especially like beers with high alcoholic content in them. I love carbonation, and thus champagne, and these have that whole “champagne of beers” thing going on (not that I’ve ever knowingly had a Miller High Life) while being able to utilize a greater variety of flavors. Troeg’s Mad Elf (which I’ve had at Pacific Standard a couple times) is a delicious, spicy, cherry-undertoned example.

-Tofu made by small, local places. It seriously tastes so much better. Laura, you totally turned me on to this! There is one brand at Whole Foods with a blue package that I really like, and The Bridge tofu (made in Middletown, CT, although I don’t know where) is absolutely fabulous, and retains more of that nutty soy flavor

-While I’m not that big of a fan of maple, and this vanilla soymilk has strong maple flavor to it, WestSoy Unsweetened Vanilla soymilk is great in chai tea, especially with a splenda or two thrown in. My weekend go-to.

-Cashews and Mixed Nuts from Costco. Such amazing quality. So good.

-Clementines. One of the few oranges I really like. I also like Blood Oranges, but I’ve been really disappointed with the quality lately—they’ve been less-than-sweet, and very pulpy.

-Brown Rice! I cooked it myself for the first time a month or so ago. I love that it’s chewy and has a slightly earthy flavor. I also just bought some Brown Basmati Rice at the health food store (Integral Yoga Foods, the one with the hot checkout guys) so I'll have that soon.

-The soup at Paradis-to-go: I am still dreaming of this amazing potato-leek-bacon soup I had there. It had pieces of cut-up potato, corn, and arugula in it. Amazing. That place knows their soups. And the checkout guys are hot. Too. (I think I am obsessed with the attractiveness of people providing food for me, plus they can't be mean to me because it's their job to smile and act nice, even if a gal like me is acting psycho. I also really need to see 9 1/2 weeks, isn't that some kind of food sex movie?)

2 girls, 1 adventure...

2009-01-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

While at Lori's in Boston this weekend, she insisted I watch (while recording) the most horrifying, disgusting video ever. It's not even available on YouTube. It doesn't really start until :20. The best part is when it kind of accidentally goes in slo-mo around 1:12 while my face is contorting hideously.

The reaction video is:

Why do I like Google?

2009-01-14T18:10:00.000-08:00

Google is kind of funny, in that typing in a query (nowadays, anyway) not only brings up searches you've done before, but also has "suggestions."

What does this say about the American psyche? WWWFD? (What would Freud Do?)

(For the record, I was with a friend, and tried to google "why do i like inaccessible men." This is another story, ha ha.)

Britney Spears adds to cultural dialogue

2008-12-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

If I want to talk about hook-up culture, do I want this effing lame article from the New York Times, complete with line graphs?

Or do I want the song "Blur" by Britney Spears, which sexily recounts getting blackout drunk and waking up the next morning unsure if you've fucked the guy sleeping next to you. Of course, the song adds vague date rape/personal responsibility through the chorus:

"Can't remember what I did last night
Maybe I shouldn't have given in
But I just couldn't fight
Hope I didn't but I think I might've
Everything, everything is still a blur"

In case the idea of a girl giving drunken consent to sex (...and how to we distinguish this from sheepish shame?) isn't enough, her song "Trouble" has this gem:

"You and I, left alone cannot be trusted
There's a lust we can't control
Slowly undress, chest to chest
And unless I say goodnight,
I know we're only gonna go too far
Please, I'm not quite ready for that next level
One kiss and that spells trouble (Trouble)

But you could talk me in, talk me into it
If you wanted to
You could talk me in, talk me into it
If you only knew"

I hate to horse shit in your parade, but this idea of coy refusal of sex when you really-kinda want it is effed up, and why people get date raped. Seriously, Britney, it's okay to want sex and ask for it, you shouldn't have to hold out until the last moment, get talked into it, or be so wasted you can justify your forwardness by how drunk you are.

I hate to proscribe behavior; Britney's songs reflect reality. There is something hot about being submissive and conforming to the stereotypically feminine role. In each of these songs, there are moments that frame the faux-submission and let us know she's somewhat complicit ("You and I, we can't be trusted" in "Trouble; the irreverent "Turn the lights out/This shit is way too fucking bright /Wanna poke my eyes out/Just let me get my head right /Where the hell am I?" in "Blur")

There's a lot going on in these songs, they're speaking to a lot of discourses going on about female-male relations. Britney gets my credit for lyrics like "I''m into phonography" (What? seriously? Okay, whatever...) and "Touch of My Hand" on her last album or so, her response to the Divinyl's "I Touch Myself."

So I am going to backtrack a bit: I think the songs are shocking, and I think they talk about some pretty effed up stuff, but let's face it, many of us have been there, done that, many of us have also been sexually assaulted (fun fact!), the world is messy, and I think it would be worse for songs to all conform to IDEALS, not REALITY.

This last idea comes courtesy of Miles Forman, who hosted a Q and A yesterday after a screening of his 1960's Czech New Wave film, Fireman's Ball, a comedy banned in the communist country for portraying REAL people, not socialist ideals of how the world will work out. Presenting facts, impressions, etc., leads to discussion (my blog post!) and I'm not going to force Britney into saying something more positive about women.

However, as far as subversive songs go, I still LOVE The Trucks (who I saw a couple years ago at Capitol Hill Block Party) and their song "T*****s" (your guess, this is the song's name from when I got it off iTunes). Oooo, and Peaches!!! Both of these chanteuses have these songs about using men, and the androgyny is soooo refreshing! I heart them so much.

I've had a couple glasses of Cab, so forgive me if this post is a bit crazy. Off to a party (and coming home alone, esp. after getting fired up about this post!)

A collection of random thoughts

2008-12-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

1. I was at a party last night where I ran into three of my college Freshman dormmates, all of whom are in stable, living together, one-arm-around-significant-other-while-I-talk-to-you-type relationships. Rather bizarre, given that I am more used to large (crazier?) gatherings of singletons. A flash: "so THIS is what it's like" or: "so this is what it's GOING to be like" (when I am old and still single...) Also, the party petered out kind of early, so at least that is one strike against being a couple.
2. However, the times when I most want to be in a couple is during weekend mornings, when I read the paper online, make veggie bacon egg and cheese sandwiches, and drink lots of tea while trying to recover from the night before and work up the energy to DO something, to GO somewhere. I think I would be more at peace with my lazy, leisurely mornings if I had someone to share it with. Or, I might be more motivated to do something. At least some sexy time, no?
3. I skipped yoga this morning (recovering!) but I can do headstands, as long as I have wall support. I am working on balancing away from the wall, which I can do for a few seconds, but then I usually end up supporting a bit against the wall again. What is so crazy about headstands is how natural and balanced it feels to be standing on your head. I probably have been physicalla able to do headstands for months, but since I had crashed and flipped over before trying I had a lot of fear. Having an instructor spot me my first couple of times really helped, so I knew that even if I kicked up slightly sideways he/she would be able to catch me. Plus, it established muscle memory. Once I knew what it felt like to be in that alignment, it was really easy to find it. Going to do a headstand right after this post...
4. I've been reading a lot of good books lately, along with all the usual movies. I joined goodreads to keep track of what I (and my friends) are reading, so if you read this blog you should join too and friend me.
5. With all the books and movies and ABSORPTION--CONSUMPTION--I do I feel so overwhelmed. Sometimes I feel like I'm not properly digesting all of the works I'm consuming, so eager am I to check it off a list or have that accomplished feeling of having finished. I end up being lackluster, abandoning movies and books quite recklessly.
6. At the same time, I have so much more time now with my new job. Less social engagements after work. Yet I don't really have much to show for it in terms of original writing or even, as of this week, increased gym-going. Ugh, discipline
7. But, bragging time: at a Monday screening of Revolutionary Road, I was privy to a Q and A afterward with Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio (matinee idols!), Kathy Bates, Sam Mendes, Zoe Kazan, and a couple more male actors that supported. Amazing. Also, I sat next to the New Yorker film critic, though I didn't know it was him at the time--but his age, notepad, and toroiseshell glasses suggested my proximity to an established reviewer. I also had to be pushy in front of my boss, which I felt conflicted about: I arrived slightly after twenty minutes before the show (let's say 17) and then felt bad when we were herded into a line outside the theatre. I investigated, saw a few seats left in the reserved section (ours) and went out and told my boss and the other reviewer that we probably could get in, we would just need to be a bit assertive (as I put it). I got my boss and the reviewer into two seats, then waited in the aisle for a few minutes, before some Paramount Vantage people had to give up their seats in order to let the New Yorker critic David Denby sit down. Since two people got up, I was able to snag a seat. The next day my boss commended me for being assertive (he was ready to leave rather than fight the crowds), and I said "well, I felt obligated to get you guys in since I was the last to arrive." I feel like being pushy can be seen negatively but I am glad that it seems this situation worked in my favor.

NY Times strikes again! Dinner party for under $30...per person, with potatoes!!!

2008-12-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm not the only one who hates the New York Times (see: earlier post, "I had almost forgotten how much I hate the New York Times") for making assumptions that the world round, uniformly wealthy, is v. concerned about incurring excessive dinner party expenses.

Here' Jezebel commenting on a rather ridiculous "budget dinner party" article.

One of many gems:
"Perhaps the most annoying thing to come out of the economic crises are the stupid articles that keep appearing in publications like The New York Times, wherein a fairly well-off person marvels at the deals he or she can find when they shop like the poors at the dollar stores and Kmarts of the world. Even more infuriating is the idea that $238.40 for one dumb party is some sort of economic success, considering that many families in this country can barely afford to put food on the table."

the poors! sound like a lolcat. but it's true!!!

Four Thoughts

2008-11-26T12:25:00.000-08:00

1. Lyrics to Britney Spears “Circus.” No lines in particular hit hard, but the jist:

"There’s only two types of people in the world
The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe..

All the eyes on me in the center of the ring
Just like a circus"

And the song itself. Kindamazing.

2. From the Manohla Dargis review of Baz Luhrman’s Australia:

"The usual line about kitsch is that it’s an affront, a cheapening of the culture, a danger. “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession,” Milan Kundera wrote. “The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”"

3. My new vision of a hipster: children playing with a stick and a hoop, looking constantly to see if anyone (their parents?) is watching, and having more fun from their reaction than playing with the hoop and stick. A tweak on Kundera's dual level explanation of kitsch. Not what's going on in the picture, but cute right? And anachronistic, another hipster specialty.

4. Ongoing: the relationship between postmodernism, hipster culture, and high/low culture, i.e. writing intellectual pieces about Britney Spears’ “Circus.” When I find one (and there will be one) I will post. Submissions accepted.

Obama now noun, not proper noun

2008-11-15T07:46:00.001-08:00

When this happens, and it inevitably will, I just wanted to say I was there first. As a post-teen girl, and a writer, I think I lay claim to a demographic that frequently invents new terms.

Yesterday, describing my gyno to a friend over dinner (she is extremely loud and funny, and favors allusions like "your vagina is a neighborhood"), I wanted to commend her in some way for overcoming a hurdle, as well as give a nod to her race.

"She's an Obama."

File this in your head and let me know if you hear it again. I thought it seemed nice and unoffensive--from Wesleyan I hate mentioning people's race, since it implies that "white" is unmarked (whoever heard of someone referring to their white doctor? from the reverse, of course, Eminem was always referred to as a white rapper). In this case, the woman was a person presumably of white/black descent, and an underrepresented demographic in her profession.

Where I've been in New York

2008-10-18T16:22:00.000-07:00

So I posted an earlier version of this map awhile back, but I am still relentlessly google mapping every place I visit. I no longer need the map for a sense of geography (those 'wait, I'm around the block from X moments') but it appeals to my "1001 places to go before you die" desire to see and catalog my experiences. It also shows where I spend most of my time...

View Larger Map

Another Solitary Friday

2008-10-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Right now my internet connection is being lame (interrupting my Netflix WatchNow of Across the Universe, damn you!) so I decided to, gasp, type in Word and post later.

Random Thing #1:

As a follow-up to my bipolar post two items ago, Jezebel had an post about bipolar people being more creative than normal people, often because they have obsessive thought patterns.

I have obsessive thought patterns too! (I'm not bipolar) Who would have thought this would ever be an asset? Can’t say I have been in a mood like that lately, but I remember lap swimming both relieving and exacerbating my condition. Like, I would be thinking about something and break out the syllables in time to my swimming, mulling over thoughts in a very non-content way, only focusing on their structure.("To-o-day I kissed a bo-y-y" times 200, with different stresses and emphases) Or I would randomly count up on times table and multiples.

The whole week after my first kiss, I would think about it constantly while lap swimming, being alternately embarrassed and so pleased. I would relive the moment again, and again, and again, it was crazy. And then all of a sudden I would have a fresh sense of giddiness and sprint through a flip turn or something crazy like that. Over the past few years I have gotten better at not obsessing over things; you can really train your brain by positively and negatively reinforcing it. I don't know that I would recommend obsessing over every little thing, I used to hate that I overthought events while the other person involved could just casually brush the thought aside. As with everything, though, and in line with the article's message, pulling apart events by looking at them over and over again can have a couple of effects. One, you notice things that you missed before, and can come up with a fuller sense of motivation and implication. Two, this "finding more out" can run wild, as you start to come up with more and more remote possibilities for people's actions, or what else could happen.

Oh, I wish I could think like that...sometimes...this makes me want to crack out my old diaries (currently in Seattle) and re-read my adolescent angst
Commenters: does this happen to you? Normal, or not normal?

Random Thing #2:
If I were a writer for SNL, I would make a skit about the pun on Microsoft Word and its slang cousin “Woooord” (that would be in a deep voice, often with a knuckle slap accompanied). People using the term in humorous ways would be the theme, and the variation[1] would involve the thugs being like “power point!” or “excel” after shooting someone down on Xbox or something like that. Or, they could be nerdy white gangsters with one black friend using all that slang, who brings it to his homies where they either roll their eyes or adopt it themselves. Obvs I am not explaining this well.

Random Thing #3:

Arianna Huffington is writing a guide to blogging. It’s pretty damn silly. You heard it from me first, it is still in bound form. I love sitting by Kirkus Reviews. I have also seen all of January’s diet books. They are not any good either.

[1] Notice I am using “theme” and “variation.” Musical terms! I have been metaphorically inspired by This is Your Brain on Music

AdAge Mention!

2008-09-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

My lovely intern mentioned me in the blog she's contributing to for AdAge, "Gen>Next."

I am the "junior-level boss." Who would have thought I would ever be referred to as boss? Seriously, working with her was an absolute pleasure. I love teaching, especially when the person is my peer. I would describe things to her and realize how much I knew (or didn't know). I have a fairly verbal thought process (which annoyed my last boss to no end), but with an intern all that chatter and ruminating was helpful, instructive.

Also, went to my first screening today. It was in the Sony Screening room in Midtown East. I was late and managed to arrive just as the Sony Pictures Classics logo flashed on the screen. Score!

I want to talk about it later, but, rest assured, Waltz with Bashir was a perfect film to initiate me into the world of press screenings. I got a little teary-eyed at the end...

Thoughts about Bipolar disorder, Addiction, and Tucker Max

2008-09-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

The NYTimes Sunday Magazine article covers the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children.

Much of it is terrible and awful: kids breaking down in Walmart, holding weapons over parents and siblings asleep in bed, banging into walls and hurting themselves in bouts of mania. I feel sick thinking of a person's lack of control over mood and behavior. I have seen this type of behavior before, not necessarily from someone that was bipolar, and watching a "self" perform in ways contrary to its personality and dignity is miserable and frightening.

At the same time, I find the personality of people with bipolar disorder or bipolar tendencies (those N.O.S. or "not otherwise specified" folks) absolutely compelling. These are people who violate social boundaries with confidence, unaware that they are crossing lines. Their uninhibited behavior would take other people mountains of alcohol and drugs to achieve. I love being the sidekick while a friend makes someone else totally uncomfortable with their audacity and boundary-pushing. Then there's the oversharing. With lives more dramatic than a soap opera, their lack of inhibition gives them a roster of compelling, play-by-play stories: willing to do anything, willing to tell anything.

Obviously I am making generalizations, I am one-sided, and reporting only on mania, but I truly feel that bipolar disorder actually benefits society at a whole: it concentrates feelings and creativity and makes others questions the norms they so willingly follow. Van Gogh always gets cited as bipolar, but what about Mary Kay LeTourneau? Not only has her life inspired Lifetime movies, she's also, seriously, become a lightning rod in the debate over age differences in relationships. I also suspect that people like "Slut Machine" over at Jezebel have bipolar tendencies, particularly when she wrote about a crazy April several years ago in which she went out every single night, slept with twenty men, and never missed a day of work. Purely gleaning from the writing (isn't that what the historians did with Van Gogh?) this type of behavior deviates from normal. Similarly, I am convinced that Tucker Max is bipolar. He's narcissistic slash overconfident, oversteps boundaries without realizing they have been crossed, cannot exercise restraint in sex or alcohol, overshares, is terribly mean towards women...the list goes on. While I find his life compelling, it is in a train wreck kind of way--I would not want to be anywhere near it, feel powerless to stop it, but nevertheless am swept up in watching such an extreme malfunction with catastrophic consequences. ARGH, he really riles me up. His behavior is just beyond offensive.

When you are dealing with psychiatric problems, how do you tell what is personality and what is a 'disorder'? I guess what I am really asking is that biology/environment question: to what extent are these disorders caused by hormonal imbalances in the brain, to what extent is it the result of environmental factors, and to what extent are these people culpable and responsibly for the poor choices they make? These are difficult questions, and I know the die-hard left position on this issue would omit the third one altogether. In defense of my inclusion of personal choice, I cite an essay I read recently in the NYTimes:

"Imagine two people trying cocaine, just to see what it is like. Both are 32-year-old men with jobs and families. One snorts a line, loves it and asks for more. The other also loves it but pushes it away, leaves the party and never touches it again. Different values? Different tolerance for risk? Many factors may distinguish the two cocaine lovers, but only one is at risk for a problem.
Asking for more drug is no guarantee of being seduced into routine use. But what if it happens? Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, has interviewed many users who became aware that they were sliding down the path to addiction.
“It undermined their sense of themselves as individuals in control of their own destinies,” Mr. Sullum wrote in his 2003 book, “Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.” “And so they stopped.”

Personally, I can totally identify with the bold statement, and think it is entirely true. I think one attribute this article leaves out, however, is that an individual's desire to gain or lose control is not only dictated by their genes, but also their situation. People who find themselves depressed or not caring enough about themselves to think that they are worth more than pursuit of transient, chemical-induced happiness could say "yes" in those situations where years before the same situation would have elicited a "no." Even week-to-week, it's considered within the realm of normal to medicate a rough week with a rough night of drinking/drugs. Then, at some point, the behavior crosses a line.

So a rather heady post for a Friday night, but I stayed in (no way I am taking a train to New Jersey to see a boy! I only do Manhattan :). I guess that might also mean "she's just not that into you")

Whole-Grain Morning Glory Muffins

2008-09-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

WhyOWhy did I have coffee at 6pm tonight, especially when I have been having sleeping problems!? I am so mad at myself--I was exhausted and just said fuck it, I am getting coffee, whatever the time. Now my body is all messed up and over the course of the evening I have eaten my way through a whole batch of hummus that I made yesterday (use lemon zest! so delicious!). I felt sick all day because I overate the Whole Grain Morning Glory Muffins I made. They were filling but maybe not high in some kind of nutrient I needed so I still felt hungry after eating them but also full. Know that feeling?

I used a recipe from WholeFood's website that I have been wanting to try forever. For sugar, I used 1/2 cup brown sugar + 5 splenda packets instead of 1/4 cup brown sugar + 1/2 cup white sugar. I would have substituted some applesauce for oil too, but my applesauce had green mold growing in it. The muffins were a bit on the greasy side, so I don't think they would have hurt to have a bit of oil removed. I think the next time I make them I will experiment with adding some bran or wheat germ. With all the fruits and veggies (...and nuts and coconuts) in these muffins there definitely is some nutrient potential. I still have half the batter in the fridge (I know myself too well to cook the whole thing at once, as evidenced by my overeating of the first part of the muffins) so I think I will add some more chopped carrots and a bit of bran to the batter and see how the second half tastes. The only other muffins I have made at this apartment in New York, the "real" bran muffins, have also benefited from this technique. In the second batch, I mix-up the add-ins, add more sugar/fat if necessary, another egg, etc., to see how the recipe responds. I am a little Jr. Alton Brown (if only). (Also, what the eff is with my parenthesis. I seriously cannot write without parentheses. I think it is because I am always simultaneously thinking an unrelated but tangentially relevant thought that I want to include but cannot sequence into my writing before or after what I am currently writing. I need to think about this. Thoughts about using parentheses in writing?)

Tofu Salad + Hummus Perfection + Effing Celebs

2008-09-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

So today I got home from work after a long meander down West 4th, up through the Meatpacking and over to Western Beef, my place of choice for cheap produce (RIP Stiles Farmer Market, now too far for me to travel). There was one place in particular along West 4th where everyone was hanging out and drinking--methinks Happy Hour.

I had half a block of this amazing tofu from The Bridge left over from when I made Soba Noodle Salad earlier this week. The tofu is made in Middletown, CT, and used to be sold at weshop, so I am a bit nostalgic. I wish I knew where the factory or whatever was, I would have begged for a tour.

Anyway, I food processed a few cloves of garlic, 1/4 green bell pepper, 1/3 carrot together. Then I added 1 and 1/2tbsp of tahini, about, a packet of soy sauce (I reeeally need to buy some, thank god for leftover takeout packets), and sea salt, since I was so low on soy sauce. And a little pepper. It was amazingly delicious. I stuffed the whole thing into a toasted pita and voila dinner. Later on I find a missed text about a happy hour--Julia and Anna saw Natalie Portman at the Magician while I pureed tofu. Fabulous. I am forever receiving texts about celeb sightings (Lindsay Lohan once from Jess! who also saw Tina Fey at the ATM around the corner when I neglected to go with her, argh!) but I NEVER see celebrities. I think I walked past a few famous/up-and-coming models today and yesterday, since they are all out and about with Fashion Week. I only knew because they were wearing shorts and had legs not normally found in nature. Most of them are about as tall as me. Just, um, about fifty pounds thinner. For sers. Who have I seen? Bobby Flay. At his restaurant, so that only kinda-sorta counts. Another famous person being chased by paparazzi on Bleeker that I didn't recognize. I am lame...

So then I made hummus.

And now I will possibly go to sleep. I have been terribly exhausted this week, possibly after last week's shenanigans, so of course now I am paying the consequences. I also might kinda-sorta be avoiding this boy who wants to "meet up" later. He was so hairy! I had to vacuum my bed after he left. On that little Sex and the City tidbit, I am out.

Chicken Quesadilla and Labor Day Wanderings

2008-09-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

Chicken Quesadilla Salad

Prep and Mix together in large bowl:
One large can black beans (drained, rinsed)
One normal can pinto beans (drained, rinsed)
½ package frozen corn (defrosted – rinse under cool water)
Two tomatoes (chopped)
3-4 green onions (minced)
3+ cloves garlic (minced)
Handful of sunflower seeds (this makes the whole thing richer – avocado would work too)

Poach, then shred and marinate while still hot. When cool, incorporate into mix:
Two boneless skinless chicken breasts
Chipotles in adobo sauce (3+ chiles)

Seasoning:
1 tbsp Cumin
Juice of two limes
½ bunch Cilantro
Sea salt
Few tablespoons Olive oil
Few tablespoonsRed wine vinegar
Shredded cheese (optional, again to lend richness)

Serve with corn tortillas (optional). Also, while delicious right away, it becomes even more amazing after marinating a few hours, or even an hour.

Pay-per-pound salad bars frequently serve as a source of inspiration for me. This particular salad comes from the Chicken Quesadilla Salad at Whole Foods Market. I make a similar salad to this already, but the other salad omits chicken and chipotles and uses a grain base of corn/black-eyed peas. I had this salad for dinner last night and lunch today, and I think I have another meal and a half left – and I seriously won’t be sick of it, it’s that amazing. For those of you who live within walking distance, come over and I will feed you!

Today I was ambling through Greenwich Village (Commerce St! Barrow St! – these streets are so incredibly old and quiet, just three-story red brick and trees. I can’t think of any comparison but a picture of colonial Williamsburg comes to mind). It occurred to me that this year I can go to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. AND Halloween is a Friday. I am incredibly psyched. I once saw a MTV Diaries where Julia Stiles walked in the parade and it seemed SO cool. Because I am a reality television addict and only know of things from watching celebrities experience them, I occasionally try to follow up and derive pleasure from doing these things myself.

I ended up in Barnes and Nobles where I read part of Tucker Max’s book They Serve Beer in Hell after reading a Gawker post about how much Gawker hates him. I agree. His stories are funny, but I actually had to stop reading at times because it was so offensive. I feel like if I read more of him, I might actually become more twisted myself, because he normalizes misogyny and problem drinking and being a narcissistic asshole to an insane extent. Engendering sympathy is not the most difficult task when writing from the first-person, even if he justifies everything he does because the girl was a "dumb bitch" or a "stupid whore." He is so beyond.

To swing back around to food again, I stopped by this Yoga slash health food store that has the best bulk bins. I love bulk bins.

They have a physicality to them, as you pick exactly what you want, perhaps pilfer a taste of an oddly-seasoned nut, and weigh the bag. It feels a little quaint and old-school. Also, it gives you a chance to sample weird ingredients and buy exactly what you need, a single girl’s dream. I bought curry cashews, which I have yet to see at another store, unlike other items like granola, where I see the same “Save the Rainforest” and “Vanilla Crunch” at different places. I also bought tamari almonds, another favorite. Lastly, I bought some brown rice (72 cents worth, love it!) as I have some tofu and veggies and am contemplating a stir-fry later this week. I don’t know how to cook rice, so any advice would be helpful. I understand brown rice is tricky and needs a ton of time. There were also six varieties of brown rice there (I told you this place has amazing bulk bins) so I hope I got the right kind.

Sex Diaries becomes one iota less anonymous

2008-08-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

My two favorite online NYMag features are "The New York Diet" and "Sex Diaries," which feature a week in the consumption of each. This week's "Sex Diaries: The Musican With Lots of Ones, but no One-and-Only," include a Wesleyan nod:

10:30 p.m.: My buddy starts a conversation with two girls sitting near us by saying something incoherent about the space program. It turns out that they've both just graduated from Wesleyan.
....

3:45 a.m.: The girls leave. One of them allegedly has a shoot for some documentary film house internship she’s doing. My buddy and I eat hummus and play songs on my iPod until six in the morning.

My question is, who are these girls? I would say 90% on each of these: Class of 2008, live in Fort Greene/Brooklyn, one of them a film major. I could do some facebook detective work but maybe I'll just ask around and see who has a a documentary film house internship...

When it rains, it pours

2008-08-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

Timeline:
Two weeks ago: received email about job offer. applied. scheduled interview.

Monday: "dentist appointment" aka interview

Thursday, 4pm: email saying, "I can't let you know until HR makes an offer" (do I have the job?)

Friday, 5pm: I have the job!!!

Monday: I need a formal offer letter! Go home during lunch to fill out recruiting forms.
Monday, 5pm: offer letter received!
Monday, 5:15pm: letter of resignation. Can I leave in two days?

Tuesday: filing and forwarding documents like crazy. checkout and signatures. exit interview.
Tuesday, 6pm: training for new job

Wednesday: more filing, emailing. write good-bye and thank you emails. print plane ticket, job packet for new job. reading of internet publications unrelated to job. gchats relaying awkwardness of entire situation.
Wednesday, 5pm: Sayanora!
Wednesday, 5:15pm: pick up steaming bagels from Murray's to bring home to parents, stinking up new sportsac to the point where it will need to be washed
Wednesday, 8:10pm: wheels up!
Wednesday, 10:45PST: wheels down!
Wednesday, 10:55PST: discover parents have not yet left for the airport.
Wednesday, 11:40: Daddy!
Thursday, 12:20amPST: HOME! ye olde manse. nary a cockroach to be found!! sleep.

Buzzin + Cisco Adler

2008-07-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

So I caught part of the new show "Buzzin" featuring Cisco Adler and found myself really intrigued by it. He's such a minor celebrity, but somehow has been connected to a lot of top stars. Case in point: Mischa Barton, who dumped him after a picture Paris Hilton took of him and his misformed, swollen testicles showed up on the internet. He's also dated Kimberly Stewart and possibly this other girl Lisa, who was the cross-eyed one on ANTM the same cycle as Kim Stolz.

Seeing the lives of people who dip in and out of tabloid culture is really fascinating to me. Unlike major stars, who seem to beat to their own drummer, as the world bends to meet them, clinging to the bottom has a unique set of challenges. The structure of Hollywood is more visible in these types of shows - the "Nos" they encounter reflect the standards of the industry, not the constant exceptions awarded to A-List stars.

One scene in Buzzin involves the benevolently irresponsibly Shwayze needing to appear in court at 8am on a Monday morning. Unfortunately, he has a show in Phoenix after the Superbowl he needs to appear in, and shmooze with the sponsors afterward. After receiving a quote of $10,000 for a Gulfstream (all the commercial flights are booked), Cisco says "Can't we make that $1700?" He knows it's out of their price range. I appreciate scenes like this, that give these reality shows verisimilitude.

Irrefutable piece of evidence that I am totally obsessed with celebrity reality shows:
This weekend I also caught part of "Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust." I only knew who Ashley Paige was from her appearance in ANOTHER reality show, "Janice Dickinson's Modeling Agency," where some of the models did a photo shoot for her collection. Bad. So very bad.

A Crisis in Voice

2008-07-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

"To thine own self be true"

Easier said than done, Shakespeare. Define: self. Define: true.

I would love to be true to myself, but I simply do not know who I am. I have been thinking a lot about this lately in the context of my writing, and what voice and tone I should adopt in my blog and any future writings I should pursue. Even in the conversational tone I take on my blog, I pull out and heighten certain emotions or perspectives, becoming meaner/more vulgar/more reserved/indecisive, etc., than I am in real life.

Take the post on my waxing disaster. I was inspired both by the detailed vulgarity of Tracie Egan and this other book I read so fast and furious I can't remember the title or the author (it was written by a USC film school alum, about him sitting around masturbating and cheating on his girlfriend and in general being an asshole all the time. one of the most deadpan vulgar things I have ever read, compelling in its oddity). I CAN write like that - I can write even grosser and weirder stuff, but I don't tend to finish or share such things because I don't want my name attached and it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I am just experimenting in my style, dabbling in the growing trend of writing in grotesque detail about sex and hygiene . However, there's something very disorienting about being able to produce a work that falls so far outside how you normally write and think. It's even more disturbing if you like it. (Along this vein, apply last two sentences to the weirdest shit you ever had).

So, as usual, I am the worst taxonomist in history. I find myself utterly unable to classify myself and my ideas, when I am sure all of this is crystal clear to outsiders. (deprecation of self: this is a standard theme of my work). I am hopeless. I would also like to point out that as soon as I wrote that parenthetical statement, I also wanted to write another sentence saying that this is complemented by an underlying faith in my self. Which I then wanted to amend to "overall concern in the self-confidence arena" or some mumbo-jumbo like that.

So I am writing circles around myself, and feeling a general lack of confidence in...everything. Perhaps I will resume with another post once this crisis has been averted. Or just post another recipe.

Cilantro-Jalapeno Hummus

2008-07-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's has some amazing food, and for the second time I was inspired to re-create one of their recipes that features chickpeas. Beans are incredibly easy to make and incredibly cheap, so I figure if I can get the seasoning right, I might as well do it myself. Unfortunately, my food processor does not whip the beans into the creaminess of store-bought hummus, and instead yields a slightly more watery, gritty texture. While I am still working out the kinks (more water? more oil?), this third batch of hummus has been my most successful yet. Adding the jalapeno and cilantro flavors makes this hummus more appropriate with corn chips than pita chips. I have a ripening avocado in my fridge so I have a feeling that I might make some guacamole to for a drinks 'n dip night.

Cilantro and Chickpea Hummus
1 and 1/2 cans chickpeas
1 and 1/2 limes + equal amount water to make the beans whirr in the food processor
1 jalapeno (I removed half the seeds - remove none or all to adjust the heat)
2 big handfuls cilantro
2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 + cloves garlic
sea salt
pepper
pinch cumin (this is the secret ingredient. all hummus needs a little of this)

Mince the garlic in the food processor. Add the beans, lime juice, and enough water to thin it out, and whirr away. It also is fine to add a tbsp or so of oil at this point. I have a small food processor so this alone takes a couple batches, and involves me transferring ingredients into a bowl as soon as they are pureed.

Chop up the jalapeno and the cilantro in the food processor. I add some water and oil to make it whip up better. I also think it's good for these spices to have oil incorporated into them.

In a bowl, stir up all of the pureed ingredients and season to taste, adding a generous amount of sea salt and a few cranks of pepper (use pepper from a grinder. it's the only way). Add the dash of cumin and notice how it changes the flavor. At this point I usually go back and add more of something. This time I added that extra half can of garbanzos, more lime, and more cilantro, because it was a bit too spicy, then added salt/pepper/cumin on top of that. If the flavors taste a little off, or you're still not sure if it needs an extra something, it's great to just pop it in the fridge and let it rest for awhile. There has to be time for the flavors to meld. I made my hummus an hour ago and just ate some of it with some yellow corn chips. Perfection. I'm excited to make this dish again - I can't say I've ever seen anything like it before, and the green speckling throughout the off-white puree looks gorgeous and maybe a bit mysterious. What I wouldn't give for this dip with a mojito right now!

Hygiene Hypothesis

2008-06-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Times Magazine had two good articles this weekend about health.

Here's one supporting the "hygiene hypothesis," reintroducing intestinal worms into the body to cure Crohn's, hay fever, and M.S.:
"The Worm Turns"

Another one talking about the illusion that we can have control over our health by controlling "stress," and how cultural ideas of what makes a person "well" or "unwell" are used to explain cancer:
"Stress Test" by Peggy Orenstein (I've read one of her books in a sociology class before, so I'm rather biased towards her work)

Pensive - Pensieve

2008-06-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

In high school, I remember emerging from intense sport seasons and having FREE time after months of school, practice, meet, dinner, homework, sleep. repeat. I would suddenly start thinking again, having random and creative thoughts. Only then would I realize how busy I had been.

Anyway, I guess I have been less busy (and/or there is no good television on...) and I've been inspired by a few things.

In my research on Epstein-Barr, and many accompanying fatigue illnesses (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, thyroid problems, etc.) I got really interested in the subjectivity of illness. The ability of the mind to articulate its state is limited. When we do express our illness, it lives in the context of our understanding of how illness works and the notions of the society around us. What is "well"? What is "sick"?

Take the state of "blackout drunk," for example. This state is particularly complicated because it pulls in ideas of memory, and also self-presentation. If I go in and out, but have moments where I don't remember what happened, is that blackout? What if I remember when someone reminds me? Perhaps there is one extreme that everyone agrees on, but the point is that we don't live in extremes, but the moment someone puts their behavior into a yes/no category they are assigning qualities to their behavior that may or may not have actually occurred. Furthermore, people have plenty of motivation to underplay or highlight their state of drunkeness, making reporting of this information even less reliable. "I was soo blackout" is such a cliche - an excuse for bad behavior, a way to show off. Denial of a blackout state comes with its own line of reasoning. So it seems if I were to order these things:
1) Sensory experience
2)Interpretation of experience: Where does my experience fit within the categories/experiences I know? Do I want to exaggerate/deny my state for any reason?
3) Articulation of experience
4) Understanding of experience by others and self - symptoms change based on categorization and feedback. i.e. "not that bad" for a blackout. Experience can be validated/negated by peers

Anyway. I decided I want to learn more about societal understanding of illness. Epidemiology was one of my surprise favorite classes (I wrote my final paper on childhood obesity and it was sooo much fun! and proffy liked it!). I had read a little bit about medical anthropology in some random course packets ( parts of Emily Martin's Flexible Bodies and Susan Sontag's AIDS and its Metaphors) so I checked them out of the NY Public Library and started a skim through.

Martin's work will be the most interesting, I think. I already looked through all the pictures :). Without having read more than the abstract/intro and the random chapter I read a few years ago, it seems her idea is that we used to think of immunity as castle/fortress model, with the body as a closed space with open orifices that germs could pass through and must be defended. As we understand the body through new technology and new cultural ideas about "flexibility" these exterior and interior changes emphasize immunity in terms of flexibility. Right now I haven't seen enough examples to make the word "flexibility" resonate in my mind but I'm curious to read more.

Right now, I personally have been very interested in the role of viruses. Traditionally, I think of viruses as infecting, and then leaving. Now, I think of them as being able to permanently alter mental states (lyme disease, that disease you get from cats) and physical states (rheumatic fever, chronic fatigue syndrome, EPV, that virus that makes you obese).

I also never thought of viruses as an environmental factor. EPV and HPV cause cancer, something I associate with too much sun (skin cancer) or not eating a healthy diet (colon cancer). Viruses can also be catalysts for people with genetic predispositions to certain illnesses, initiating Multiple Sclerosis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Crazy! Viruses are not just COLDS. I feel I have changed my perception so much since that day in biology we had to write a two-sided persuasive on whether or not viruses were alive. Back then, the idea that something not an organism could infect you was something we were conditioned to feel was novel, the same way a prion (what causes Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy aka Mad Cow Disease) causing a disease seemed crazy, since a prion is just a protein.

All of these ideas about viruses freak me out and make me feel like I have no control - so the view that emerges from that for me is that there is no "one size fits all" way to defend the body against contagion - everyone has different weaknesses in their castle wall, so to speak, and every body has soldiers that are quick to recognize one attack and oblivious to another. Moreover, attacks can change immune structure and response, causing even more unpredictability with regards to response. So there's really nothing you can do but feed your little soldiers and keep healthy and not worry too much about it.

...and let me take back what I just said: I also find autoimmunity absolutely fascinating, especially because scientists have founds ways to manipulate the body's immune response in the case of certain allergies, such as peanut allergies. This is where I get really excited about the other book I just read, The Dirt on Clean, which talked about how these opposites
healthy vs. sick
dirty vs. clean
moral vs. immoral

have at times been aligned in every single configuration. Dirt used to be seen as protective; cleanliness a sign of moral suspicion. The polio epidemic, in fact, was so bad in the 1950s because people were too damn clean. The disease is passed by fecal-oral contamination, so sanitation had progressed to the point that everyone was too clean to be adequately exposed as a child, but not clean enough that they would never ever be exposed to that disease. Similarly, many children on farms do not have allergies, so many dust/seasonal allergies are associated with environments that are too clean and give the immune system nothing to do, making it over-react to benign substances. Thus, recently, the idea of dirt as 'exercise' for the immune system, enabling it to learn to react appropriately, has been repopularized. So fascinating!

Anyway, enough about diseases, time to go off and have some Saturday night fun.
(Although I must admit, I am quite tired, and have been all day. Is it me? Is it the Epstein-Barr? What would my lab results say? If they said I was well would I still be 'sick'?)

The Thrill is Gone

2008-06-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

Chicago's neighborhoods are known for their block parties. Police come and block off the streets with saw horses, everyone drags out their grills, coolers full of pop and beer, and folding tables that heap with barbecue and pot luck favorites. There are balloon tosses, dizzy lizzy games, the whole gamut.

Before our block parties (I lived in Chicago until I was eight) I would wake up early and sit on the curb, waiting, waiting... I would run in and ask my Mom when she thought it would start. I had the most amazing sense of anticipation and excitement. The sitting-on-the-curb was really only the last leg of a long week where every day I would think about how amazing this block party would be.

I don't really have that sense of anticipation and excitement anymore. I also don't have the same level of disappointment. When events are canceled, the stars do not align, or something just doesn't work out, I don't care like I used to. On one hand, the anticipation for those events was kind of annoying - almost paralyzing. I was so impatient and antsy I couldn't do anything else while I waited for that block party or that event. I also worried a lot more about events, sometimes to the point where I couldn't enjoy them. Several years ago my Mom took me to the Nutcracker. We had amazing seats, dressed to the nines. I had seen the Nutcracker before, but this time we made it extra special. I saw a thing in the program about how people who left their seats would not be allowed to return, so of course I got the nervous pees and had to leave and miss part of an act in the play. I hated CARING so much about things - I couldn't do anything else because of all the anticipation and worry, and even then I was a bundle of nerves. It was a freaking play, come on!

Now, though, I wonder if I could gain back just a little of that wonder I used to have from events I now think of as routine - an event or a party. I just don't have that childlike joy or anticipation anymore; I'm totally blase about everything, and it's sad.

Obligatory SATC Post

2008-05-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

Friday I saw Sex and the City: The Movie. One of our publishers, WashingtonPost/Newsweek, rented out a theater for the occasion. All week I had been IMing Rita from work talking about how excited I was for the premiere, but when we arrived, slightly late, everyone was outside. Apparently the theater didn't know about the reservation. All shows were sold out until 2am.

Several minutes later, we found out that because there was a contract, the company made the movie theater cancel two screenings of other movies in order to honor the contract. The show must go on! Saved! (I was a little curious about this because this meant they had to scrounge up two extra prints - were they backup prints? I asked my reps about this and they said the theater also had said they couldn't do it because they didn't have enough prints but then they 'mysteriously' showed up)

I adored the movie. Since the movie was so hyped up, reviews were coming in fairly mediocre, which I expected. No movie can live up to THAT much hype. There was such a media shitstorm of coverage of that movie. Lord. After watching the SATC Oprah I had had enough and just wanted to see the actual movie. I was entertained the whole time. The movie was more drama than the TV series, but that was fine. It had a different story to tell. Film student comment: Michael Patrick King is a fairly competent director, but sometimes his shot composition drove me nuts. I don't think he knows how to compose long shots (perhaps from shooting so much television?) and they just seemed so darn awkward to me. Like the scene of Carrie coming down the stairs after the 'wedding' and even sometimes just walking down the street. Ok enough.

The movie actually shocked me a few times with its vulgarity - since I've mainly been catching random TBS reruns lately, I forgot about the sex scenes. As a fellow redhead, I appreciated seeing Miranda's redhead areolas (swear to god, all redheads have them. except she's a fake redhead. so maybe it's a pale skin thing) and got a good laugh about the bikini wax comment. Seriously, though, close-ups of pubic hair? I thought I was watching She's All That for a second.

Carrie's rehearsal dinner takes place at Buddhakan, and there's one scene outside where over Miranda's shoulder is MY STREET. I couldn't help but whisper "My apartment is right around the corner! Sex and the City filmed around my corner!".

I was also excited to see the scene on New Year's Eve were Carrie comes over to Miranda's apartment. A few months ago, I was looking for an apartment on the Lower East Side (in an area way yet to be gentrified, just like in the movie) and happened upon a film crew setting up a winter night scene. As I walked through the scene one technician asked "How should we light Sarah?" and got all flustered before/as I realized they were referring to Ms. SJP herself.

On the way home, I decided to walk from 34th to 15th along 9th avenue, since I wanted to walk past Buddhakan. EIGHT tour buses were parked out front and around the corner. EIGHT. I don't even think eight tour buses of people could fit in that restaurant (? right ?). All night, I kept on seeing girls in SATC-esque dresses. Yes, it was warm, and one of the first days of summer - but having seen so many girls going into the film dressed like that, I just "couldn't help but wonder" if they were all channeling the same SATC message.

Epstein-Barr me from fun before the three-day weekend

2008-05-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

So on Friday I had my third doctor's appointment in three weeks over this nasty sinus infection/alllergies/eight-week cold that's been dragging me down. The doctor ordered full bloodwork and I came up positive for Epstein-Barr. The first thing I thought was "that House disease!" since on that show they ALWAYS test for Epstein-Barr whenever someone is incurable. According to my doctor, Epstein-Barr is a virus that causes three months (minimum) of fatigue, and the only thing you can do for it is good nutrition, hydration (including avoidance of alcoholic beverages), and lots of rest. It was kind of a relief to finally figure out what the problem was. I have been very tired lately, but it's only affected my ability to go to the gym. The few times I have gone in the past month or so I had to down caffeine just to get up the energy to go. So all this time I thought I was just being incredibly lazy, but really it was this virus. Of course, now that I have this diagnosis, eeeeverytime I've been tired I think it's the E-P-V. Yesterday I went Brooklyn thrift shopping with Rita from work, and as we made one of our final stops and walked farther and farther away from the subway station I got more and more tired. Then my cough started acting up and I felt close to that part at the end of the cartoons where the characters are dragging themselves from the desert, unable to go on. I had to turn back eventually. I felt so lame though.

Saturday was a little better. I went up to Macy's on my own, since I desperately needed shoes and I was enticed to enter by a coupon I found in amNewYork (which turned out to be invalid for the brand I wanted to purchase. boo.) On the way there and back I took the subway for literally one stop, which I wouldn't have done ordinarily, and in general walked slowly. I was fine. Today I'm feeling so incredibly tired, but also antsy because I really want to leave the house since it's so nice out. If only I had a good book to read, argh! Someone please lend me a good book. I have burned myself out of tv. I got to the point where I DVR'ed The Real World. Which is really, really, really bad this season

[Aside: I WILL be watching The Real World: Brooklyn. I also want to make it my mission to run into them in a bar. But no hooking up; they always look like TV-whore skeezes when outsiders infiltrate the group through sex.]

Since I feel such an obligation to 'take it easy' (in addition to a genuine fatigue, argh.) I am so stir crazy. I've been cooking a lot, but often without regards for what I actually want/need. This morning I wanted cereal, but I also needed to take up time, which meant I should make eggs or my breakfast fruit crisp. I ended up eating my cereal and making my breakfast fruit crisp, just because I felt like I had nothing else to do. Toooo much time. I'm just so sick of television and really want to get into a good book. I might need to make an emergency trip to Barnes and Noble today.

Weekend Update

2008-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

So this week started ouut with two exciting concerts: Tegan and Sara and The Glow in the Dark Tour (Lupe, N.E.R.D., Rihanna, then Kanye West).

Monday I met Anna after work and walked over to Terminal 5, munching my beet salad with asparagus and goat cheese and walnuts that I picked up from Thalia to Go (my faaaaavorite lunch spot) along the way. We listened to the opening band, An Horse, a bit, but they did not compare to Tegan and Sara. Only one of their songs seemed unfamiliar - at every opening chord I had that "ooo" of recognition and anticipation. Compared to their recordings, their concert voices and instrumentation was right on par. Occasionally in the few opening lines their voices would fumble a bit, and once Sara started off-key a bit, but overall they were quite strong. They also changed the tempo and added extra lines, bridges, etc., of some of their songs which I appreciated. I expected to be able to see above the crowd, given my 5'9'' height, 1 and 1/2'' heels on my boots, and female demographic of the Tegan and Sara audience, but alas, this one 6'6'' boy kept moving around and obstructing my view. Then I would move, then he would move. It was annoying. Although I think Williamsburg Music Hall is my favorite venue, I still liked Terminal 5 more than the next venue I would go to, Madison Square Garden.

We got the Kanye tickets through work. One of our vendors offered to take us, and even dangled backstage tickets in front of us, since one of her friends works on Kanye's legal team. Although she got two, since she couldn't get enough for the whole group so she had to give them back. We still had pretty good seats - I was actually happy not to stand on the floor, since I was (am) still feeling a bit sick and didn't want to stand after the concert the previous night. A lot of teenagers from New Jersey were at the concert. Some of them created matching neon graffiti t-shirts, and ALL were wearing those plastic slatted neon aviators popularized by Kanye. I actually planned on procuring a pair for myself before the concert, but I was kind of happy my plans fell through since everyone else had the same idea. A lot of these teenagers were from New Jersey - "New Jersey in the house?" got an embarrassingly loud response.

I didn't really get into the concert. Much of the music seemed pre-recorded, I felt so far away from the artists, and I also felt like I was part of an audience selected not by fandom but by dollar signs and subscription to mass popular culture. With a lot of concerts, I get a sense of kinship - I like bands hyped on the internet, etc., but not on the radio, so it's like a big mass of people who all have the same artist playing on their iPod, and you can finally figure out exactly who the audience is for the band's music. So m Not so for this concert. It was all, whoever saw Kanye on TRL and spend $150 bucks on ticket kind of audience, picked not because of their unique interest but their willingness to spend money to consecrate their radio-induced fandom. I think my disinterest also stemmed from the people I was with - you can't really get crazy with managers and directors, your boss and your vendor's boss. I was chatting with the head of sales, who was sitting next to me, and when I mentioned how much I liked the Peter Bjorn and Paul song "Young Folks" playing in between sets, even though it was kind of over, he whipped out his Blackberry, imputing the bands I mentioned (I also had to correct his spelling, saying no, it's spelled B-J...) While his eagerness to get hip with the times was cute, I felt like I was at a moment where indie culture was being commodified. The people I was sharing this music with, this experience with, were just noootttt the people Kanye raps to - we were all pretenders. The whole experience felt so fake and hollow. Rihanna also did a remix where she covered a few songs, including M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" and Lauryn Hill's "That Thing". Her cover of "Paper Planes" bothered me much more than the Lauryn Hill cover. To me, much of M.I.A.'s music is subversive and political - just as she has publicly displayed outrage for having her gunshots removed from the tracks on her David Letterman performance and MTV viedo, I worry that her political message gets lost when it's transferred into popular culture. I feel rather rusty on this, though cultural hegemony/imperialism, etc., come to mind when I think of this experience. I need to brush up...

Kanye's performance itself was such ego - he had his songs tell of story of him being stranded on a planet and needing some force to bring him back to Earth. He sang a song about shooting stars. Sadly, these were not enough to bring Kanye back to earth. His fem-robot eventually revealed to him:

"We need the brightest star in the universe to bring your spaceship back to Earth. We need YOU, Kanye. You're the brightest star."

For sers?

Doctor, my sinuses are infected!!!

2008-05-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

So literally a month ago, at the beginning of April, I had a bad ten-day cold. After about ten days, my symptoms changed, leading me to believe I had either pink eye or stubborn allergies. I suffered through for another two and a half weeks of not being able to sleep and feeling stuffed-up, red-eyed, and generally shit-eating in the morning, occasionally getting to the "fuck it" point where I would either drink, smoke, break celibacy, or leave a message for a doctor who would not call me back. Earlier this week, I talked to my Dad, who finally convinced me that I had a sinus infection. Duh! I've had these numerous times before, and they require antibiotics to fix, meaning I would have to see a doctor.

With renewed determination, I called numerous doctors' offices until I actually spoke to someone. (Press random digits on the phone; they will not call you back). The visit itself involved a forty-five minute wait before I went up to reception only to be informed that there were still TWO people in front of me. Luckily, they let me go ahead of them. My doctor was actually amazing, a bubbly woman who made me feel "aaallllll better" just by commenting on how awful my nose and ears looked and validating the fact that I've been feeling like crap for the past month. She even was kind enough to ask about my insurance situation. Although I should have good insurance through work, I stupidly chose the HDHP (High Deductible Health Plan) for my medical needs, which so far has seemed to be the 'pay full price until you have thousands of dollars of expenses' plan. She gave me drug samples and we both gave a collective f-u to Big Pharma. I love this woman. So now I'm halfway through my antibiotics, although still not feeling 100% due to the most clogged up ears ever, as well as an inability to taste which is driving me NUTS. I really hope these antibiotics work because I didn't read the whole pamphlet and it turns out you aren't supposed to take multivitamins while taking these antibiotics because the calcium makes the antibiotic ineffective. Anyway, enough medical talk. I am going to be the worst old person ever, the kind of person who's always talking about their hemorrhoids. I apologize in advance.

The Cat in the Hat gets a Wax

2008-05-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

I just had the most gruesome experience in my entire hair-removal career.

This Saturday afternoon, I decided to forestall my Bed, Bath & Beyond exchanges and take care of some serious hair growth. I hadn't shaved my legs for a week, so I thought it would be a prime time to whip out that SurgiWax I bought on clearance for $3.19 a few months ago at the end of bikini season. I'm no stranger to the waxing world. Usually in the summer I'll wax a few random strips off my legs until I get bored or the pain overwhelms me, and it helps cut down on how much hair grows back and gives me a somewhat smoother shave. With at-home wax, it's kind of hard to do a thorough job, but it's a really good complement to shaving.

I open the box, skim over the instructions, and crack open the lid. The foil cover that's under the lid has peeled off and curled up in a smile, but the wax looks ok so I heat it up for the suggested minute. It's still as hard as a rock, so I give it another minute. It's kind of clumpy but I stir it up and it seems to dissolve into the same consistency.

I look at the instructions - hmm, it seems like I just use this mini wooden paddle (the kind you eat ice cream with when you're a kid) to smooth on the wax, let it get hard a bit, and peel it off with my fingertips. I can do that!

I try a bit on my leg first. It gets some hair off, although it does seem like there's lots of mini tacky bits (kind of like chewing gum, but taffier) left on my leg. No matter. I do a bit on my high upper left leg. Again, it doesn't really seem to come off. Man, I just did my nails this morning. There's green gunk all over my hands. I do one strip on my hamstring. Yuck. This doesn't work either. I think I only got three hair follicles, and there's green gunk stuck all over my leg. Oh well - this all dissolves off in the shower. Thank God.

I'm not one to give up easily, so I decide to do one last strip, the quote unquote bikini line, where if someone looks straight at you they'll see hair unless you're shaved. This does not work at all. The wax is a little colder now, and it hurts, and is already starting to look red. Shit, maybe I'll just go return my sheets to Bed Bath & Beyond now and deal with this later. But no - I don't want to get my jeans and underwear sticky. And I pulled my back two days ago, and I'm literally walking like Quasimodal and FUCK I need more advil RIGHT NOW. Ok. Hot water will help my back pain, and the wax will wash right off in the shower.

I get in the shower, and discover that is not the case. It's only melting this green salt water taffy substance even more. I have green gook all over my hands, and this green gook is in turn covered in hair. I'm like the Edward Scissorhands of waxing. Wait, don't you use ice cubes to get sticky stuff out? Yes! I get out of the shower, and hear a squishing noise. I flooded the bathroom. I keep on doing that with our new shower liner. Alex is going to kill me. I hobble to the refrigerator, clutching my back, and get an ice cube, attempting to harden the wax and get it off the various places it's stuck all over my body. This works slightly, but I still have green wax all over me. I also realize I broke my blood vessels, as the instruction pamphlet warned. I have a giant hickey next to my pubes. I have a date tonight. If it gets that far, I'm now going to have to explain my waxing disaster, as well as the green plasticine clumps clinging to my remaining hair, lest he think I have sores or another relationship with a bikini line biter. Oh God. Why did I do this!?

Shaving! Shaving is the answer. I've already tried to run a pumice stone all over the stuck-on wax, but maybe I can just shave everything off. Hmm, this seems to be working well. Look at all the hair stuck to my razor. Wait. Now nothing is shaving off. The gunky hair has clogged my razor. I try using a scissors to get rid of the hair, I try using the showerhead. I go over my legs again, then feel them. Hair. A week's worth. Shit. I hop out of the shower again, wade through the flooded bathroom that has my male roommate's black pubes and chest hair floating everywhere, and search for another razor. I get back in. I try again. At some point I shampoo my hair and condition. I rub more and more soap over my body in vain. I get out of the shower again. I certainly hope my roommates aren't home because I'm dripping water everywhere and one hundred percent naked. I grab another razor (#3). I try shaving my legs. Ok, hair coming off. Avoiding green gunky areas. I've been in the shower for a good half hour now. Ow, my back. my back. There's green gunk stuck all over the tub. I have green peas of wax all over the ledge. My hair, my roommate's hair, is stuck everywhere. Like the cat in the hat, I have turned everything and everything, everywhere, pink with my mess. Oh lord. And my date. Well, I shouldn't hook up with him anyway. It's a sign. But maybe if he accepted a girl with green wax all over her and red inflamed hairs and hickey-sores? No, that just means he's desperate. Argh.

So now I'm laying on my back, barely able to move because of the back pain, with random green sticky spots all over my body. And four random patches of red bumps where I attempted to wax. And one giant clump of broken blood vessels in a hickey-like formation. I'm SUCH a lucky girl. I'm never buying wax on clearance again. In fact, I think I may bite the bullet and let a stranger get down there and outsource my genital grooming. Because oh my lord, there is absolutely no way anything can be worse than this.

I had almost forgotten why I hate the New York Times

2008-04-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

The New York Times' article "Finding Your First Apartment" epitomizes all I hate about the Times. It gives advice for an incredibly small slice of privileged New Yorkers, while ignorantly assuming that 'everyone' has the same problem finding the "elusive $2,000 apartment". Why not just re-title the article "Ivy League Finance Majors move to city and discover New York apartments are hard to find and must live in Upper East Side instead of Murray Hill'. Moreover, the article isn't even right - most Wesleyan people, even those in finance, live all over the place, at all kinds of different price points. It's totally stupid and New York-centric. In anthropology we dealt with similar questions ("ethnocentrism") and the way out was through post-modernism: acknowledge you are coming from a certain perspective, insert yourself into the story, and let the audience make the judgment about how your personal point of view affects the story you tell.

If this author talked about writing his article from his cushy apartment, mentioned his son's search for a two-grand apartment fresh from school, etc., etc., I wouldn't fault him for it. I also love reading magazines like New York Magazine, which by their brand name assert a specific point of view. Yes, I know the Times is left-leaning (Republicans love to mention this), but aren't papers supposed to at least pretend to be papers of the people? I'll have to think about this more...

IM Logging and other Waves of the Future

2008-04-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

A familiar scene in movies and books goes like this: an old woman unwraps stacks of letters tied with string, triggering a flashback. Variations have intruders upon an expired person's estate coming upon these brief snippets of someone's life and piecing them together.

Tonight I did a Google desktop search for a paper I wrote in college, wanting to recall its title ("The suburbs as a site for deviance and criminality" for my television class Junior year, Laura that is for you). That was the fourth hit. Before that, I discovered thirteen months of IMs logged between an old 'lovah' (do I want to call him that? only in this context.) and myself.

To read through months of contact in minutes was odd. I could barely recognize myself in the words I wrote - could not remember the reasons I apologized for being away from the computer for so long; did not recall the ennui I described experiencing over my winter break. At times I seem posturing, other times I revel in my biting wit or astonished with my ability to be mean and nonchalant.

What put me in that ambivalently sentimental mood even more was not reading between the lines in the conversations, but trying to fill in the gaps between the conversations. Unanchored by text, I have only wispy recollections of what occurred between these conversations, and a sense that what happened was both worth remembering and much too painful (in that shallow, angsty way) to bother. At times our attitudes toward each other change in tandem, as we both respond to some particular event, but other times our conversation remains the same, even as I remember a marked change in our standing with each other. College was an intense blur - parties then studying then parties, so much fun yet so stressful at the same time.

I find it interesting that after centuries (millenniums!) of letters being the primary personal record left behind, AIMs are coming into the equation - I personally started logging my AIMs so I could remember what it would be like at X age, in case I ever wanted to write something about this time period. There's definitely some incriminating content on those logs. I'm sure should I ever get famous or some nonsense like that, what I wrote would quite possibly be the downfall of my career (full disclosure: I have never hired a prostitute a la Spitzer), but I think that would be the result of whatever I've written getting miscontrued and blown out of proportion, not because I would have done something truly reprehensible. So I can sleep at night. In fact, that's what I'll do right now, sore throat and post-nasal drip notwithstanding...

Chinese Celebrity Birth Control Crisis!!!

2008-04-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

With yet another young star getting knocked up, I have but one thing to say: our nation's birth control pills are filled with sawdust! This is going to be another Chinese toothpaste scandal!

As much as I like films like Knocked Up and Juno, my laughs of choice regarding pregnancy are more in line with Onion articles. With teen pregnancy rates tentatively rising, and pop culture acolytes leading the way with their celebuspawn, I just don't know what to do with myself. It's too much of a mindfuck to be seeing all these people my age having children (celebrity and non-celebrity).

I remember once hearing a professor say children and pregnant people were like aliens on college campuses, since you live in a place with such age homogeneity. I definitely was more than a little freaked out this summer when I was unemployed in Seattle and the Upper East Side, when during the day all you see are BABIESBABIESBABIES. When going through a major life transition like that, it's enough to make you want to "opt-out" before you even opt-in, just have a baby and avoid the real world. At least that's the way it sounded to my unemployed self.

As for my own buns in the oven - with a few seconds in the microwave, you can barely even tell when they're a little stale...

La De Da Dee

2008-04-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was underwhelming - a date on Friday night with a mere glass of wine, and then more wine on Saturday with Jess and her work friend LeeAnn (we talked about making homemade granola! I tried this week but kinda sorta burned it but then ate it anyway..) but not mustering up the energy to leave the apt.

Anyway, I did have a good time at the show, which took place at Mercury Lounge and featured Mahogany as an open, which played poppy, fun music. They're based in Brookyln so I'm sure I'll hear them again. The main act was Dirty on Purpose. The highlight of the show was the wasted guitarist, George. He was very cute, especially when he presented the bottle of Jack Daniels with a plastic nipple on the rim to the band member celebrating his birthday. Not so cute when he basically disappeared, because he was sitting on the floor playing his guitar and stumbling around wasted, and drinking whiskey like I drink water after a long run. At one point someone in the audience tried to feed him a hot dog and/or a piece of cake. His band members were like "What is that!? He has a nut allergy. Are there nuts in that?" Funny juxtaposition of the rock star lifestyle and reality.

This week I haven't done much - I've been feeling under the weather so I've been sitting in the recliner chair with my blue puffy down blanket and watching loads of TV, and feeling like a huge couch potato when my roommates return home after exciting evenings. In my fitful sleep, I was awakened to one roommmate coming home at 2am two nights ago. The life. Instead I've been sleeping for ten hours. Yesterday morning I pressed my snooze button and had a seven minute dream about taking a shower before my alarm went off again and I realized I still had to take my shower. I hate this level of sickness - where you're not that sick but feel compelled to 'take it easy' lest you delve into a deep sickness and inability to do anything.

Yeasayer and Man Man are tonight, at Brooklyn Masonic Hall. I'm nervous to go out in Brooklyn...

Sweet Sixteen Suspicions Finally Validated

2008-03-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

I always suspected that the families on My Super Sweet Sixteen were money launderers. As far as I could tell, there are only two reasons people throw parties like that:
1. This is the lifestyle in which they're accustomed. Strike that. Even when the royals arrive in helicopter, they don't make everyone come out and scream, nor do they make showy displays of their assets.
The new #1:

1. Pathological need to show off
2. Excess of funds due to shady business practices.

The answer is #2. ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Some guy sold oil securities to oil wells that had no oil in them, then used the investment money to buy cars, purses, etc., for his daughter whose hicksville friends probably didn't even realize they weren't looking at canal street knockoffs.

Gawker wrote about it here.
The video to watch "how many Vuitton purses would this oil well buy, Daddy?" here.
NYTimes article here.